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The Relation Between 
Religion and Science: 
A Biological Approach 



By 

ANGUS STEWART WOODBURNE 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

NEW YOBK 

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON 

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 

TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, 8ENDAI 

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SHANGHAI 




THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND 
SCIENCE: A BIOLOGICAL APPROACH 



THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 



THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 

NEW YOBK 

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON 

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-EAISHA 

TOKYO. OSAKA, KTOTO, FUKUOKA, SEND A I 

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY 

SHANGHAI 



The Relation between Religion 

and Science: A Biological 

Approach 



By 

ANGUS STEWART WOODBURNE 




THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 




< 



Copyright 1920 By 
The University of Chicago 



All Rights Reserved 



Published January 1920 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, Illinois. U.S.A. 



©CI.A561782 



FEB -9 1920 



PREFACE 

The attempt is made in this thesis to examine the age-long 
problem of the interrelationship of religion and science from a new 
angle, namely that of psychology considered as a biological science. 
There is a general recognition today that the elements common to 
the religions and those common to the sciences are psychological. 
The facts of religious experience and the facts of scientific experi- 
ence are so multiform that the only place to discover a common 
basis is in the attitudes of consciousness giving rise to these variant 
concrete expressions. Furthermore there is a general recognition 
among psychologists that the genesis of all the attitudes, including 
the religious and the scientific, is localizable in the instinctive 
behaviors of the psycho-physical organism. 

It seems only fair that psychologists should recognize that 
those best equipped to define instinctive behavior are the biolo- 
gists. On the basis of a biologically acceptable definition, a sound 
theory of the origin of religion and science is possible. The theory 
proposed is that these attitudes have their roots in behavior which, 
while instinctive, is multiple. In proof of the contention, refer- 
ence is made to many of the rites and practices of primitive peoples 
which are recorded in the source books on anthropology. It is 
the hope of the author that this effort may contribute in some small 
measure to the solution of a great problem. 

A. S. Woodburne 
Camp Dodge, Iowa 
January, 1920 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Concerning Method i 

II. A Historical Survey of the Influence of Psychological 

Theory on the Problem 10 

III. The Differentia of Religion and Science . . . 31 

IV. The Search for a Scientific Definition of Instinct . . 44 

V. The Theory of Specific Religious and Scientific Instincts 56 

VI. The Effort to Identify Religion and Science with Cer- 
tain Specific Instincts 63 

VII. The Multiple Instinctive Origin of Religion and Science 69 

VIII. Theological Implications 91 

Bibliography 96 



vn 



CHAPTER I 
CONCERNING METHOD 

It is the aim of this chapter to set forth in outline the develop- 
ment of a scientific method. The deductive method of Aristotle 
dominated the thinking of the Middle Ages and was ecclesiastically 
sanctioned in Catholicism. But the needs created by scientific 
progress made the evolution of a better method inevitable. The 
seventeenth century witnessed the rise of induction which in its 
developed form is the method of modern science. But induction, 
to be complete, must make use of the genetic method, involving 
history and psychology. Thus this sketch (i) indicates the 
cause and nature of the long conflict between science and theology, 
and (2) furnishes a vindication for the study of the relation of 
religion to science from the point of view of psychology. 

The attainment of a method for a scientific approach to our 
human problems has a history which takes us back to the Greeks. 
The beginning of logic is to be found in Aristotle. It was his 
theory that reality is to be found in particulars, and that these 
particulars have universals and attributes attached to them. He 
was the first to conceive of reason (Xoyos) as a definite subject of 
investigation. - The process of reasoning, he taught, was a com- 
bination of premises (a-vWoyicrjjLos) to produce a new conclusion. 
Logic was thus for him a science of deductive inference. He can 
hardly be said to have a logic of induction. His universals were 
obtained by a process of analysis and abstraction in which differ- 
ences were eliminated and particulars were grouped according to 
their homogeneity into classes. Accordingly science, which was 
selective, picked on a specific object, which it handled with the 
tools forged for the purpose. Its abstract universals were obtained 
in the analytical fashion, and were then made the major premises 
in a deductive process which led to a definite conclusion. Any 
reasoning which could not be put thus in the form of a syllogism 
was regarded as imperfect. 



2 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

Following upon the period of Greek scholarship came a long 
period when scientific learning made no progress. The achieve- 
ments of the Greeks had been absorbed in the utilitarian spirit 
of the Roman Empire. Then followed that period of political 
and social corrosion known to history as the "Dark Ages," a 
period noteworthy for its lack of creative thought. It is to the 
Arabians that we owe the dawn of a new interest in both science 
and philosophy. These men, though Moslem, had come under the 
influence of Greek thought, and were the means for a revivification 
of Aristotelianism through the channel of a Semitic language. In 
Persia and in Spain, then under Saracen control, from the ninth 
to the twelfth centuries these men championed the mediaeval 
renaissance of science and philosophy. From the Arabians the 
renewed interest in Greek thought rapidly spread. The fact that 
the King of Sicily, Roger II (1093-1154), and the emperor, Fred- 
erick II (1 194-1250), called numbers of these Arabian scholars 
to their courts gave to the movement a new impetus. Translations 
of Aristotle were made, and the universities at Paris, Bologne, and 
Oxford began to study Aristotle with zest. 

The spread of Greek thought meant that it soon found its 
way into Christian circles. The later scholastics were acquainted 
with and largely influenced by the new movement. At first the 
effect was an unsettling of the orthodox views of the time, and a 
type of mystical pantheism arose. This resulted in the University 
of Paris, with papal sanction, placing a ban on Aristotle (12 15), 
but in less than half a century the ban was removed, and the 
Aristotelian system became the church's best tool chest. Alexander 
of Hales (d. 1245), Robert Groseteste (d. 1253), and John Rochelle 
(d. 1 271) were among the first ecclesiastics to make use of Aristotle. 
Albertus Magnus (1 193-1280) was "the first scholastic who 
reproduced the whole philosophy of Aristotle in systematic order 
with constant reference to the Arabian commentators, and who 
remodelled it to meet the requirements of ecclesiastical dogma." 1 
But it is to Albert's great pupil, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1227-74), 
that we owe a thoroughly digested and ecclesiastical rendering of 

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica (nth edition), XXIV, 353, article "Scholasticism," 
by A. S. Pringle-Pattison. 



CONCERNING METHOD 3 

the Aristotelian system. In his Summa Theologica Aquinas has 
made use of the conceptualist machinery of the Greek thinker. 
The form of the propositions with which he dealt is syllogistic. 
The content is intended to cover the range of human knowledge 
arranged according to the method of the subsumptive logic and 
subordinated to the church. It made use of all sources of ecclesi- 
astical authority, Scripture, conciliar decisions, patristic comments 
and tradition, and thus built up a work which soon became the 
theological dicta of the Catholic church. So that the test of 
Catholic orthodoxy from that day until this is agreement with 
Aquinas. 

The effect of this movement upon the church was to be seen 
in the attitude which it assumed throughout the Middle Ages. 
The effort was made to maintain an ecclesiastical standardization 
of all the departments of human life, science, and ethics, no less 
than religion and theology. The church claimed that she had 
received her knowledge by a supernatural revelation. The super- 
natural character of church knowledge thus placed it in a class 
independent of and superior to scientific knowledge, the source 
of which is fallible human reason. In case of a disagreement 
between ecclesiastical and scientific findings the course of conduct 
was logically plain. Remembering the source of church knowledge 
and that quality depends on origin, the inevitable rejection of 
scientific knowledge followed. Thus it was that the Catholic 
church maintained its authority ever science, and the bitter conflict 
between science and theology ensued. It ought to be evident 
that the conflict was virtually between two types of science. 
Theology, as we have seen, rested upon the whole framework of 
the Aristotelian deductive schema. But the physical sciences 
have never made any clear progress under the regime of deduction. 

The heroic struggle of science for emancipation in the use of a 
method which would insure the most trustworthy results met with 
dogged and prolonged opposition. A beginning was made by 
Roger Bacon, who was a contemporary of the great Aquinas. But 
for two hundred years after Roger Bacon the church completely 
dominated the situation and no appreciable progress was made. 
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries certain epoch-making 



4 TEE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

events transpired which, on the one hand, compelled the church to 
take a less dictatorial attitude toward the sciences, and, on the 
other hand, made the evolution of a new method inevitable. 

First there occurred the two great discoveries which gave rise 
to the great extension of navigation — the discovery of America by 
Columbus in 1492 and the circumnavigation of the globe by 
Magellan, 15 19-21. The necessities of the expansion of naviga- 
tion called for a new cosmology. The Ptolemaic hypothesis posited 
a flat and stationary earth at the center of the cosmos. Magellan 
proved that the earth was round by sailing around it. Copernicus 
(1473-1543) was the framer of the heliocentric cosmology which 
recognized the rotundity and motion of the earth. 

The astronomical theory of Copernicus was opposed by Catholic 
and Protestant alike. The Protestant Reformation antedated 
the birth of induction, so that the Reformers were as bitter as the 
church in the invectives which they hurled at the new science, 
which conflicted with the scriptural cosmology to which the church 
had lent its imprimatur. Bruno, the Italian philospher and 
scientist, was burned as a martyr to the new science in 1600. But 
the telescope of Galileo, ten years later, proved the truth of that 
for which Bruno had been compelled to lay down his life. 

The importance of Galileo was twofold. Not only did he 
establish beyond a peradventure the heliocentric cosmology, but 
he discovered that the motion of the earth was self-induced and 
self -sustained. This was a double attack on church doctrines. 
First, the church anthropology made man the center of creation, 
but even the earth which he inhabited was now seen to be eccentric. 
The dissolution of that doctrine was completed in the nineteenth 
century with the advent of Darwinianism. Secondly, the hypoth- 
esis of self-motion was a death-dealing blow to the doctrine of 
absolutes and apriority. Statics gave way to dynamics. 

The work of Galileo was continued by Johann Kepler (1571- 
1630), Issac Newton (1642-1727), and Laplace (1749-1847). 
Newton formulated the doctrine of gravitation by which the 
motions of the various planets are attributed to an inner pervading 
force, thus encountering opposition from the theological doctrine 
of a creating Providence. Laplace's nebular hypothesis afforded 



CONCERNING METHOD 5 

a causal explanation of the origin of the heavenly bodies which 
still further retired the theological explanation. 

Every step of advance was made at the cost of a struggle. The 
older method was intrenched with all the fortifications of an 
organized and supermundanely authenticated system. But for all 
that, events proved that the source of the old knowledge was no 
guaranty of its truth. So the work of these astronomers along 
with the accomplishments of men in the other sciences, such as 
Leonardo da Vinci in the geological realm, made insistent the 
evolution of a method which should do justice to things as they are. 

It remained for Francis Bacon to make the first formulation 
of the inductive method. Beginning with the hypothesis that 
the knowledge of nature depends on observation and experience, 
he proposed to observe and collect a vast number of facts, and 
then to follow the inductive method of getting universals from 
this mass of particulars. The aim was to acquire a command over 
nature by knowledge. He was therefore opposed to the syllo- 
gistic method which accepted its major premises from science on 
trust. 

Descartes in his Discourse on Method attempted with mathe- 
matical precision to attain a basis for knowledge in the indubitable 
facts of experience. He carried into the field of the mental pro- 
cesses the method of natural explanation which the astronomers 
had introduced in the explanation of cosmic processes, in con- 
tradistinction to the supernaturalism of the Middle Ages. So 
that Francis Bacon and Descartes both insisted on the banishing 
of theology from science, thus freeing science to work out a new 
method as it substituted mechanical for final causation in the 
explanation of phenomena. 

From the seventeenth century the inductive method has 
gradually become dominant in science, until today we may say 
that science is coterminous with induction. To be sure, the 
inductive method in our day has become something more scientific 
than it was in the days of Francis Bacon. Baconian induction 
was too atomistic and lacked a means of testing its conclusions. 
That has been remedied in the use of hypotheses and the trial- 
and-error plan for testing them. We are able to take the past up 



6 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

into the present in this way, and through the difference with the 
past we realize the present. The scientist finds an exception to a 
rule and sets about the formulation of a new rule that will include 
the exception. In this way the conclusions of science are attained 
experimentally and afford a legitimate means for the explanation 
and interpretation of human institutions, including religion. 
Science uses the research method, which includes the recognition 
of a problem and the finding of a solution thereto by the employ- 
ment of hypotheses and tests. 

With the evolution of a scientific method it was inevitable that 
sooner or later it should be employed in the study of religion. 
So long as religion was equated with revelation a science of religion 
or a historical study of religion was impossible. A beginning was 
made when David Hume in 1755 published his Natural History of 
Religion, giving it a historical and psychological basis. For more 
than a hundred years after that progress was slow. Here and 
there a scholar attempted to study religion more scientifically. 
But as a rule the method was the examination of a non-Christian 
religion and a comparison of it with Christianity with a view to 
showing the spuriousness of the former. It was a contrast between 
a human invention and a divine revelation. 

It was not until the nineteenth century that the historical 
method really came to its own. That was consequent upon the 
rise of induction. A thoroughgoing observation of any human 
institution involves an investigation into the matter of how it came 
to be in the historical process, of the social substratum in which it 
was created, and of the order of sequence in its development. The 
first chair in the History of Religions to be established in a university 
was in the College de la France in 1884. Since then progress has 
been so rapid that the historical method has become synonymous 
with scholarship in the study of religion. 

The historical method furnishes a survey of the way or ways 
in which any human product has functioned and has changed to 
meet the exigencies of social situations. It also furnishes data for 
the work of classification and appraisal. By the use of historical 
analyses one is compelled to understand the social and functional 
worth of all human creations. The older method tried to give an 



CONCERNING METHOD 7 

account of the truth of an idea by a syllogistic process; the new 
method leads to a study of the worth of an idea in the historical 
process. That means an appreciation of the relativity of all 
thought-products and the necessity of working with a true organon. 
And the organon to which the historical study of either religion or 
science leads is not conformity to an authoritative standard, but 
competency to do something for man which he needs to have done 
in his struggle for existence. 

Notwithstanding the Catholic theory of an unalterable system 
of religious truth, the actual history of beliefs shows constant 
experimentation and mutation, an unconscious recognition of the 
scientific method. Contingency has played comparatively little 
part in the development of scientific thought as it has in religious 
thought. Actual problems demanding solution, concrete needs 
demanding satisfaction, social tensions demanding adjustment — 
these have been the historical progenitors of scientific laws and 
discoveries as well as of religious doctrines. 

The historical method is the effort to be honest. It is the 
recognition that every development in history is determined by 
sociological and psychological influences. The deductive method 
is essentially normative. It works well so long as the major 
premise is scientifically credible. But when the universal scorns 
to account for the exceptions the method breaks down. The 
historian is just as much interested in exceptions as in rules. He 
seeks to know the facts and to adjust his theory to the facts rather 
than the facts to his theory. So that the historical method is the 
only method for objectivity. It recognizes that the life-processes 
cannot be confined within the bounds of the syllogism. Hence it 
takes cognizance of things as they occur, regardless of their place 
in logical processes. Scholasticism worked on the assumption 
that the criterion for religion must be logical, which in the last 
analysis is an attempt to locate the seat of religion in the intellect. 
But the historical and psychological study of religion shows that 
its locus is rather in deep-seated, felt needs of life which find their 
roots in the instincts. 

The historical study involves the application of the genetic 
method. An interest in the functional value of an institution leads 



8 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

to the functional problem of how it came to be as the product of an 
evolutionary process. So that the natural complement of a histori- 
cal study leads into the field of social psychology. "The past is 
involved in the present in the case of human history as much as in 
that of geological evolution." 1 Social psychology is one of the 
best tools that modern thought has invented for the interpretation 
of human institutions. It helps to an understanding of the place 
of religion in the social current and of the functional relationship 
between the facts of religion and the larger social whole in which 
religion operates. Historical study proves that there is no period 
which has a monopoly of spiritual values sui generis. Social 
psychology shows that it is as fruitless to seek to understand any 
religious reaction by itself as to visit a fossil museum without an 
understanding of geology. History gives us the records; social 
psychology helps us to relate religion to the stream of thought and 
life. 

So then the deeper problems of life urge us on from a historical 
to a psychological study. History may be able to supply us with 
the order of sequence of religious happenings, but even here there 
are lacunae to fill in which the historian is dependent on the psychol- 
ogist. In addition there are the further problems of (i) the 
determinants of the sequence of religious occurrences, and (2) the 
cause of the genesis of the religious phenomena themselves, and 
these are functional problems which it is not the province of history 
to solve. History is concerned with the external forms and prod- 
ucts of religion and science. The study of the mental processes, 
individual and social, which gave birth to those externals is a 
psychological study. Consequently the last quarter of a century 
has witnessed the application of a psychological method to a study 
of these human institutions, particularly of religion. 

The immense advance in the study of psychological science 
itself is fortunately coincident with its being used as a method for 
studying religion and other disciplines. Of especial import for the 
religious problem is social psychology, through which we are learning 
that the individual comes to mental and moral consciousness only 

*F. A. Tennant, "Historical Fact in Relation to the Philosophy of Religion," 
in Hibbert Journal, VIII, 177. 



CONCERNING METHOD g 

in a social world. The rise of religion is in the corporate life of the 
group. And, as Durkheim has shown, 1 the religion of a folk is a 
socializing of the supermundane world on the analogy of its own 
social structure. 

The data for the historian and the psychologist alike are what 
people do. But behavior is socially determined both as to origin 
and to direction. So that history and psychology both lead to a 
social investigation. It is in the life-experiences of folks, considered 
historically and spiritually, externally and internally, that we seek 
to locate the genesis and value of both religion and science. Reli- 
gion and science are both of them social facts inasmuch as they 
originated in the folk experiences to meet human needs. 

It is only by the use of psychology that we can hope to make any 
adequate analysis of the phenomena of religion and science as 
human institutions. Historical observation furnishes us merely 
with the external phenomena. Cults and ceremonials, rites and 
rituals in religion, and laws, theories, and laboratory materials in 
science are not the stuff which afford us the differentia and the 
common elements for definitive purposes. The hopelessness of 
getting definitions on the basis of mere externals has been sub- 
stantiated by their very numbers. The basis is a psychological 
one, 2 and it is to be found in the study of the history of human 
endeavors in their actual situations. The unifying principle which 
underlies the multiplicity of religious phenomena, the synthesis by 
which we abstract meaning from the facts of religious development, 
must be psychological. In precisely the same way the unity 
behind the multiplicity of scientific phenomena is psychological. 
So that we are driven into the use of a historico-psychological 
method for an appreciation at once of the differentia and the 
genesis of religion and of science. 

1 Les Formes EUmentaires de la Vie Religiease, pp. 56, 57. 

3 Cf . Galloway, The Philosophy of Religion, section B of the Introduction, where 
the author discusses the problem of method. He points out very lucidly that an 
understanding of religion is only possible through psychology, because its expressions 
are those of a conscious mind which it is the province of psychology to interrogate. 
If, as Galloway points out, "the unifying principle which underlies the religious 
phenomena is the psychical nature of man" (p. 31), so too we may contend that the 
unifying principle beneath the multiform activities and creations of science has its 
seat in man's psychical nature. To that problem chapter ii is addressed. 



CHAPTER II 

A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHO- 
LOGICAL THEORY ON THE PROBLEM 

In an examination of the problem of the relation between 
science and religion, it would be difficult to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of the psychological bearing of the problem. A survey of the 
history of the relationships which have existed between these two 
disciplines reveals the fact that the prevalent psychological theory 
and method which were dominant in each period were two of the 
most important factors in determining the viewpoint of the scholars 
of that period toward this specific problem. Before passing to a 
consideration of the approach to the problem which is obtained 
through contemporary psychology it is the purpose of this chapter 
to indicate the bearing of the theories of the past upon our problem. 



An investigation into the behavior of primitive peoples dis- 
closes the fact that there was no such thing as a science, mental or 
physical. There was no such thing as religion in the differentiated 
sense that we use the word today. There was no such thing as 
magic, as sophisticated people use the term. What we see is a 
vast complex, a heterogeneous mass of all the stuff out of which life 
is made. In other words, it is an undifferentiated complex of 
materials. One of the difficulties against which we need to guard 
is the danger of reading back into the activities of primitive man 
the differentiations which mark an age of culture. 

The behavior of primitive man approximates to that of his 
animal ancestors in that it is more instinctive than reflective. 
His nervous system is as yet not developed to the degree that he 
has attained control over his motor activity, but that motor 
activity is simple and is spontaneously discharged in response to 
the stimuli which irritate his sensory organs. The attainment of 
control over those motor reactions is a part of the process through 

IO 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY n 

which there emerges intelligence and the power of reflection. 
The differentiation between the neurosis and the psychosis was 
evolved in this primitive stage of the life-process. 

In this early period of the history of the race man did not make 
the difference which he came to make later between himself and 
the lower animals. The dominant needs of life which he ex- 
perienced, nutrition and reproduction, were characteristic of the 
animals of the other genera. They were possessed of qualities, 
such as celerity in the deer, strength in the tiger, or cleverness in 
the fox, which he deemed to be decided advantages in the struggles 
of life. In that primitive stage when his brothers were often a 
prey to other animals, there was no overmastering evidence that 
he was getting the best of it. He belonged to a subaltern genus 
(man) in the summum genus (animal). It was, in brief, a pre- 
dualistic age. 

In this primitive period there were certain phenomena, such as 
dreams, sleep, death, the visibility of the breath on a cold day, 
which played an important role in the evolution of man's reflective 
processes. One of the first evidences which we have of a dualism 
resultant therefrom was the difference which he made between the 
seen and the unseen. The phenomena mentioned helped him to 
the conclusion that there must be an unseen world which he 
imaginatively peopled with life such as existed in the seen world, 
with the exception that the life there was disembodied, which 
gave to it an undue advantage over him. These animistic con- 
ceptions were at first very vague, as were indeed all of his primitive 
reflections. They were the reflections which belonged to a pre- 
scientific and therefore pre-psychological age. In the seeking for 
the satisfactions for his primitive wants, about all the distinction 
which he made was a distinction between things or powers which 
helped and things or powers which hindered him in the procuring 
of those satisfactions. The unforeseen phenomena of life would 
call forth instinctive reactions. The stubbing of his toe on a 
protruding stone or root would cause him to react to the stone as 
though it were animated, and he would never quite recover from 
that attitude growing out of his first reaction. In that way the 
objective world would very gradually become for him animated 



12 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

with helpful and harmful spirits. His own desire to help his 
friends or to hinder his enemies in the struggle to procure the 
satisfaction of their wants contributed to the association of his 
helps and hindrances which were to him inscrutable with some 
other animus. Here we have another factor which played its part 
in the development of animism. It would be assuming too great 
sophistication, however, to say that here we have primitive man's 
scientific category of causality. It was simply his distinctions 
between helps and hindrances toward the satisfaction of pressing 
needs, the helps being gradually associated with a friendly animus 
and the hindrances with a hostile animus. Neither can we say 
that this belief in animi was due to the fact that man was "incurably 
religious/' to use the phrase of Sabatier, 1 but it was rather the 
beginnings of the reflective process trying to solve the problems of 
life with its demands for means to meet its recurring needs. 

The age of primitivity, then, is not to be studied with the 
object of procuring data to substantiate a preconceived theory 
which we desire to have confirmed. If we approach the facts as 
they are presented in experience in the history of the race, we do 
not find primitive man making those differentiations which we 
sometimes assume are as old as the race, the distinctions between 
the physical and the psychical, between the human and the lower 
animal, between religion and science and art. We are able, indeed, 
to find a great deal of the material out of which these differentiations 
developed, but the process of making those distinctions belongs to a 
subsequent age, and the fact that man did learn to apprehend the 
differences noted proves that he has transcended the age of primi- 
tivity. 

II 

In Greek thought we meet with the development of a thorough- 
going dualism. And the great names with which this development 
is associated are, of course, Plato and Aristotle. Plato arrived 
at his dualistic hypothesis through a consideration of the cognitive 
problem. He set out with the conviction that knowledge is 
attainable only through deduction, and set for himself the problem 

1 Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, p. 3. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 13 

of discovering why knowledge comes through conception. He 
concluded that the value-judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness 
do not arise from experience. So he was forced to posit a super- 
sensible world as the source of those value-judgments. In that way 
he had the supersensible world as the intelligible world, the real 
world, the world of ideas. Over against it was the world of ex- 
perience, the sensible world, or the phenomenal world. The latter 
he conceived to be a copy of the former; the latter was the par- 
ticular and the former the universal. Plato gave metaphysical 
value to the world of ideas and had an aversion to the natural 
order. His process was the very opposite of ours. He knew the 
supersensible world through knowledge (eirHTTimi) and the sensible 
world through faith (jiviris), thus reversing our order of faith and 
certainty. Plato was certain of God, and he accepted the phenome- 
nal world by faith. We are sure of the world, and we know God 
by faith. For him the Idea was being; matter was non-being 
(to ov and ixij 6v). In this way Plato arrived at dualism as an 
epistemological device. 

Aristotle attempted to overcome the difficulty inherent in the 
dualism of Plato. He accepted the point of view of his predecessor 
that the beginning must be made from conceptual knowledge. 
The knowledge of real being, he agreed, is the knowledge of univer- 
sals. But he saw that Plato's theory of Ideas was inadequate to 
explain the world of experience. So he tried to identify the two 
worlds of Platonic thought by saying that real being is in the par- 
ticular, in which the universal is also present. To discover the 
relationship of the universal to the particular he founded the 
science of logic. Aristotle asked the question, What are the gener- 
ative causes of real being? His answer was that there are four 
causes, viz., material causes (v\rj), formal causes (etSos), efficient 
causes or moving causes (apxv), and final causes (reXos). As the 
reflection went on there came to be a practical identification of 
the formal, efficient, and final causes in one constituent general 
principle. This meant a reduction of generative causes to two, 
Idea or form (etSos) and matter (v\rj). The former is the essential 
or cause proper, while the latter is the secondary cause. Aristotle 
formed a conceptual pyramid with his one eternal, actual Being, 



14 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

the uncaused Cause, unmoved Mover, pure Form without matter, 
at the apex of the pyramid. 

So we see as a development of Greek thought a dualism whereby 
the material world was made secondary to the ideational world. 
Mind is in control. Mind was the form of organized matter, 
which Baldwin takes to be a "restatement of the hylozoism and 
animism of the Ionic thinkers. " x 

When Aristotle comes to discuss the individual he is controlled 
by this same dualistic viewpoint. He refers to the relationship 
between the body and the soul as that which exists between matter 
and form, capacity or potentiality, and function or actuality 
(bwaixis and evreXix^a) ■ The soul dominates the body which 
exists only for the sake of the soul. At the same time he makes a 
differentiation in the soul itself, there being a part which, like the 
body, is mortal, i.e., sensation, imagination, memory, and will, 
but also a part which is immortal, viz., the active intellect (vovs 
Toit]TiKos). In this active intellect he posits actual existence and 
describes it as immaterial, imperishable, impassive, and eternal. 
Yet this active intellect is something which is external to man and 
is not an organic part of him. It comes to him from without. 
It appears from his descriptions to be in no wise different from the 
absolute intellect. In this way he seems to make the immortal 
part of the human intellect, active intellect, a gift of the Absolute, 
if he does not identify it virtually with the Absolute. Absolute's 
love of scientific knowledge might be called a passion, and, as Weber 
says, his "theology is at bottom an apotheosis of vovs." 2 

Ill 

The theoretical dualism of the Greek thinkers furnished a mode 
of thought for the Christian thinkers of the New Testament, patristic, 
and scholastic periods. 

In Thomas Aquinas we reach a man who had all the inheritance 
of the biblical and patristic writings upon which he meditated with 
a mind trained in the subtleties of Greek thought. His great 
teacher, Albertus Magnus, had been a pupil of Avicenna, the 
Arabian philosopher who had been foremost in the revivification 

1 History of Psychology, II, 184-97. 2 Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 134. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 15 

of Aristotle. In the time of Albertus there was already emerging 
the perplexity over the opposing truths of revelation and of natural 
science. He tried to effect a modus vivendi by asserting that 
" revelation is above but not contrary to reason." Yet he con- 
cluded that the ideas of a creation in time, of the miraculous, and 
of such elements in doctrine as those which have to do with the 
soul, sin, grace, etc., are incapable of harmonization with reason. 
They must be accepted as given by a higher authority. So he used 
a method which made a reconciliation of science (reason) and 
religion (revelation) impossible. His attempt to apply the Aristo- 
telian logic consistently meant that he made a breach between 
Jewish supernaturalism and Greek rationalism which was irrepa- 
rable. "By the false antithesis thus raised between reason and 
revelation, he prepared the way for the long conflict between 
theology and science, of reason and dogma, of naturalism and 
supernaturalism, of individual judgment and collective authority. " z 

Aquinas was a greater pupil of a great teacher. As we have 
seen, like Albertus, he made diligent use of the tools which had 
been forged in the workshop of Aristotle. Aristotle had worked out 
a scheme whereby you proceed from class-concept to larger class- 
concept up the line until you reach ultimate class-concept. The 
only way to understand the particular was by realizing that the 
universal was contained in it. This gave to Aquinas the mold 
into which to run the stream of his theological thought. It was 
his purpose to trace the passing of revelatory knowledge from the 
higher to the lower in ecclesiastical authority. The system of 
Aquinas was essentially a hierarchy. He posited a hierarchy of 
bodies in nature, the consummation of which is the natural life 
of man which on its part became the starting-point for a higher 
spiritual life which is developed under church supervision. He had 
two realms, the realm of grace and the realm of nature. The 
intellect is governed by the reason which it cannot evade. The 
will tends to be governed by the principle of the good in which 
its freedom is established. But evil comes when the efforts of the 
will are paralyzed by sensuality. So we see the beginning of the 
division of the psychic life into intellect, senses, and will. Wherever 

1 Beckwith in New Schaff-Herzog E.R.K., I, no, article "Albertus Magnus." 



16 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

we have that division made in a mechanical way, some power 
of control is necessary to prevent inner chaos. Here Aquinas 
resorted to the technique of Aristotle in an ecclesiasticized form. 
The church must be in control. Reason must be under the domina- 
tion of revelation, as Albertus had said. Science must be dominated 
by theology which, of course, was that theology which the church 
sanctioned as orthodox. Thus we see the beginnings of the asser- 
tion of religious authority over psychology, science, and all the 
other disciplines, a characteristic tendency of the whole mediaeval 
period. " During the greater part of the Middle Ages to be learned 

in science meant to be learned in the sacred text The 

scientific textbooks were based upon the Bible, at least in con- 
siderable part." 1 And the spirit of the Middle Ages was made 
vocal in such books as Ymago Mundi, written by Cardinal D'Ailly 
in 1410 — a geographical work in which the author " gives us one 
of the most striking examples in history of a great man in theological 
fetters. " 2 Another book of the same type is Vincent's of Beauvais, 
Mirror of Nature, in 1244. It was a book of amazing erudition in 
which the author had gathered materials from all sorts of sources, 
and then proceeded to show that the church is dominant over all, 
whether it be in matters of astronomy, physics, botany, geology, 
anatomy, psychology, physiology, zoology, geography, law, art, 
mathematics, economics, or religion. Still another example is to 
be found in the work of Samuel Bochart in 171 2 on The Animals of 
the Holy Scripture, in which all the investigations of the naturalists 
are used to corroborate his theological interest. Every book which 
attempts to use the Bible as a source book for the deduction of 
science is, whatever be the date of its publication, a work of 
mediaevalism. 

IV 

The advent of Descartes (b. 1596) marks for us the dawn of 

the modern period, the beginnings of the release from mediaevalism. 

Here the distinction between the subject-self, or the self as the 

thinking and judging principle, and the object-self, or the self as 

1 A. C. McGiffert, The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas, p. 26. 

2 A. D. White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, I, 107. Cf. also 
PP- 32-36 for reference to the Physiologus and Bestiaries. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 17 

the object of thought, whether representing mind or ideas, first 
emerges. In short, Descartes marks a transition, viz., a shift 
in the point of interest from the divine to the human, from the 
supernatural to the natural. He was led to this point of view 
from the fact that he was primarily a scientist and a mathematician, 
and secondarily a philosopher. His interests in the problems of 
philosophy and psychology grew out of his speculations with his 
scientific data. He made a critical examination of the process of 
human thinking, giving it a natural basis as over against the 
supernatural basis accorded to it in the Middle Ages. The merit 
of his critical work is that he gives the beginnings of the freedom 
of our modern world. The unfortunate thing is that he reduced 
man to a logical entity, and made religion and science both to 
consist in ideas. However, he was moving in the direction of 
freedom, so that for him science was no longer in the control of 
theology. Both religion and science were left free within the 
distinctive sphere to which each belonged, religion to the sphere 
of the supernatural destiny of the soul, and science in the sphere 
of nature. " Between science and faith, thus conceived, a bargain 
was struck. Hands off; each to his own was the compact; the 
natural world to intelligence, the moral, the spiritual world to 
belief." 1 

We have seen that the psychological thought of Descartes was 
rationalistic. Leibnitz and Wolff were psychologists of the same 
type. Kant criticized this rationalistic system on the ground 
that there were unwarranted metaphysical assumptions involved, 
as, e.g., when Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am," he men- 
tally added, "a substance. " The conclusion from a logical subject 
to a metaphysical one is unwarranted. So Kant criticized that 
very reasoning process which Descartes and the other rationalists 
had taken as a point of departure. 

The modern period brings us to that very interesting develop- 
ment in psychological theory known as faculty psychology. To 
be sure, there are traces of it before the modern period. As we 
have seen, even the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, had divided the 
soul into "parts." And Thomas Aquinas talked of the " lumen 

1 John Dewey, The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, pp. 180 ff . 



1 8 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

supematurale to receive the unchangeable concept or essence of 
an object, and of a lumen naturale to conceive the nature of a 
species by sense presentations, regardless of individual character- 
istics. " J The faculty concept had been used by Leibnitz, but he 
had along with it a conception of a pre-established harmony, and 
his approach toward the problem of the relation between religion 
and science was an effort to overcome the dualism of that of 
Aquinas and the other Schoolmen. Wolff was a follower of Leibnitz, 
and he posited the faculty theory, saying that the faculty of 
knowledge comprises a well-ordered combination of facts and 
theories. Wolff stated the law of association, which was that 
"every idea tends to recall to the mind the total idea of which it 
is a part. " 2 The theory of Wolff was that the activity of the soul 
is distinguishable in various directions which may be called " facul- 
ties, " and of which he makes the logical faculty the primal. He 
had also the active faculty or will, and the imaginative faculty 
which produces representations connected by the law of associa- 
tion, to which reference has just been made. 

The faculty concept was sharpened up still more in Kant 
(i 724-1804), who made distinctions between the sensibility or 
faculty of perception, understanding or the faculty of rules, and 
reason or faculty of principles. "Sense gives order to objects in 
space and time, intelligence relates them in synthetic categories, 
and reason imposes the regulative ideals of all knowledge. " 3 

The most consistent and logical of the psychologists of this 
type was Lotze. Baldwin sums up the matter in connection with 
him as follows: 

Put on the defensive in the matter of determining the fundamental func- 
tions or faculties, Lotze accepted the consequences of his view. Herbart and 
Brentano had argued that if once we admit different faculties, there is no 
stopping anywhere; every distinguishable mode of mental process may be 
described as a separate faculty; color-perception and piano-playing no less 
than feeling and will. Lotze did not deny this, but claimed that certain 
generalizations were possible which permitted the valid demarcation of the 
great functions recognized in the Kantian threefold division. 4 

1 Max Dessoir, Outlines of the History of Psychology, p. 65. 

2 Ibid., p. 136. 3 James Mark Baldwin, History of Psychology, II, 34. 
4 Ibid., p. 86. Lotze's date was 1817-81. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 19 

There are two reactions, in general, which have come about in 
relation to our problem as a consequence of the domination of 
faculty psychology. In the first place, wherever we have the 
mental processes divided in a mechanical fashion into faculties, 
it means that some device must be sought in order to secure a 
unity of the psychical life. We have seen that in the mediaeval 
scholars this unity was secured by the positing of an external 
control in the Catholic church. We have seen also that with 
Descartes we pass out from this external control and seek for a 
human way of dealing with our data. The next point of interest 
for us is to be found in the fact that first one and then another of 
these faculties of the mind or soul is made the regnant influence. 
For example, in Descartes ideas are uppermost, and religion and 
science are given their place in accordance with the domination 
of the faculty of judgment. And the God of Descartes was born 
in the matrix of his need, to be sure, but that need was not the 
usual religious need, but the need for a bridge by which he might 
be able to pass from the self over to the world. So much does 
Descartes emphasize this point of view that he reduces man to 
little more than a cognitive somewhat. 

The reaction away from this domain of the reason is to be 
seen in Paschal (1623-62), the French scientist and religious phi- 
losopher. He was far from locating religion in the domain of 
reason, and his conception was that of a diametrical opposition 
of the one to the other. This did not result in his throwing religion 
overboard because he could not make it conform to the demands of 
reason. But rather he determined to hold to religion and to 
defend it in the face of the difficulties which it encountered irom 
the side of reason. This he did by giving to reason what he con- 
sidered to be its rightful place in the realm of feeling. We are 
familiar with his famous dictum: "Le coeur a ses raisons que le 
raison ne connait pas." But the fact that he finds a legitimate 
place for religion in the domain of the faculty of feeling does not 
prevent him from being a first-rate scientist. In the spheres of 
mathematics and physics his discoveries were epoch-making. 

In Immanuel Kant we come to the man who stood for the 
domination of the third faculty, namely, that of the practical 



20 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

reason or will. Descartes had criticized ideas; Kant criticized 
ideational processes. He knocked the bottom out of all the stock 
intellectualistic arguments for the existence of God. He also 
argued that God cannot be an object of sensuous perception either 
to men or to himself, so that disposes of the faculty of reason and 
sensibility as spheres within which to get a basis for religion. And 
he resorts to the will or practical reason as the guaranty of our 
faith in God, in freedom, and in immortality. It was the urge of 
the moral problem which drove him to the conclusion to which he 
eventually came. We must have God or there is no sufficient 
guaranty of the existence of the moral order in the universe and 
of the ultimate victory of the good over the evil. 

Thus we have in Descartes, Paschal, and Kant the experiment 
of trying out successively the three faculties of judgment, sensibil- 
ity, and volition as a means of securing a unity of the psychical 
processes and as a basis for religious assurance. And the interesting 
observation which we may make is that all three men were in favor 
of giving to science a free hand in proceeding with the work which 
belonged to its sphere. Each of them was a man of wide scientific 
knowledge, an authority in his own sphere in the day in which he 
lived. Descartes was learned in mathematics, being one of the 
founders of analytical geometry, and also learned in anatomy and 
physiology; so that his science gave to him the method with which 
he proceeded to carry on his philosophical speculations. In 
PaschaJ, too, we have a man of great learning as a mathematician 
and a physicist. His name is connected with the science of hydro- 
dynamics as one of its founders, and stands high in the annals of 
the mathematical sciences as a contributor to progress in more 
than one direction. Immanuel Kant was also an authority in 
matters of science as well as philosophy in his day. Among the 
subjects which he taught in the University of Kbnigsberg were 
logic, metaphysics, and cosmography. He attained special distinc- 
tion for his work in physical geography, the well-known nebular 
hypothesis being associated with his name. 

Other names might have been added to those cited to show 
that the tendencies to make one of these three faculties as the 
dominant one is a recurring tendency. We might have included 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 21 

Hegel in the group of those who emphasize the intellectual element; 
and Schleiermacher with his definition of religion as "a feeling of 
absolute dependence" might be placed in the group of those who 
put the emphasis on the sensibilities; and Royce, who thought of 
religion as the will to be socially minded in terms of the "beloved 
community," is a type of those who emphasize the will. 

We owe to the faculty psychologists a second reaction which 
has direct bearing on our specific problem. Reference has already 
been made in the discussion regarding Descartes to the relationship 
which Dewey describes as a compact between science and religion 
that each would not infringe upon that territory which was held 
to be sacred by the other. 1 And this seems to be the general 
position assumed by men of that type of thought, excepting, of 
course, those who seek for a harmonizing device among the faculties 
in the form of an external control, such as Bible or church. But 
men of the type to which reference has been made — Descartes, 
Paschal, Kant — represent faculty psychology with a thoroughly 
human reference. And the tendency among all men of the type 
is to assume that religion and science each dwells in a glass house 
at which the other dare not throw stones. There is a legitimate 
sphere for each of them in the processes of life, and no occasion 
for any cross-fertilization. 

In the system originating with Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) we 
have a splendid example of the manner of dealing with the problem 
of the relation of science to religion from the point of view of 
faculty psychology. For Ritschl religion was antithetical to 
mechanistic science. It was a spiritual freedom which comes 
through communion with the one God in the person of Jesus and 
in the living community of God to which the Scriptures refer as the 
" Kingdom of God." Ritschl acknowledged that he was a disciple 
of Lotze, and we have already noted that he was the most radical 
of all the faculty psychologists. The result, it would seem, of 
Ritschl's discipleship to Lotze is that he has acquired a faculty 
theory of the functions of religion and science. He distinguished 
them by saying that science gives us existential judgments, whereas 
religion gives us value- judgments. The aim of the religious man 

*Page 19 above. 



22 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

is entirely at variance with the aim of the man of science, the 
former being interested in the conservation and interpretation of 
established values, while the other desires rather to interpret 
reality mechanistically in the terms of causal relationships. To 
explain a thing scientifically means that you show the causal nexus, 
so that if science accomplished its task fully it would give us the 
complete explanation of phenomena in terms of causality. Ritschl 
places these two realms in such marked antithesis to one another 
that he thinks a scientific attempt to deal with the values of 
religion would put religion out of business. A man working in the 
realm of science might come to the conclusion that there is no 
adequate ground for a belief in God. But even then the fact of 
Jesus will make such an impression on his emotional experience 
that he will be compelled from the point of view of value-judgment 
to make an affirmation. In this way Ritschl makes religion 
independent of science. At the same time he is willing that the 
scientist should enjoy the fullest liberty within his own field, which 
field he marks off very concisely by calling it the sphere within 
which existential judgments are made. The following quotations 
from his own words will show explicitly how he has dealt with 
the matter: 

Scientific knowledge is accompanied or guided by a judgment affirming 
the worth of impartial knowledge gained by observation. In Christianity, 
religious knowledge consists in independent value- judgments, inasmuch as it 
deals with the relation between the blessedness which is assured by God and 
sought by man, and the whole of the world which God has created and rules in 
harmony with his final end. 1 

The lordship over this world which Christianity bestows upon men is not 
to be taken in an empirical sense. So that it is of no consequence what position 
the planet, with which our existence is bound up, occupies in the universe. 
.... It is impossible to perceive how this should invalidate the estimate 

of self which Christianity leads men to form Our spiritual life is 

subject to laws which are not related to known natural laws as their conse- 
quences, but come under an exact opposite category Collisions between 

religion and science, especially natural science, are only when laws which are 
valid for narrower realms of nature or spirit are erected into world laws. 2 

1 Albrecht Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, p. 207. 

2 Ibid., pp. 614-16. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 23 

The criticism of this position is that it is so dualistic that it keeps 
religion and science in two separate and distinct planes. Science 
is in the plane of existence. Religion is practically supernatural; 
at least it is placed in a sphere of reality which is unique and which 
does not supply any data with which science can deal. Science 
moves altogether in the realm of the objective, whereas religion 
has a right to put up a sign over the subjective sphere: No tres- 
passing allowed. Moreover, the distinction between existence- 
judgments and value- judgments can hardly be validated. Ex- 
perience does not find any such antithesis between the two kinds 
of judgments. The judging process means the classification of 
certain things, which means that you have evaluated them accord- 
ing to certain standards. It is also true that any judgment, 
whether it be one of value or not, implies the existence of that 
which is being judged. The truth of the matter is that, as there 
can be no valid line drawn between existence-judgments and 
judgments of value just because they are constantly intermingling, 
so there is a constant intermingling of the religious and scientific 
interests, and the differentiation will have to be sought in another 
direction. 

Professor Ames has keenly criticized the approach of the 
faculty psychology to the problems of life when he stated that this 
particular form of psychology arose " historically with individual- 
ism, while individualism in turn accompanied the differentiation 
of the old social unity into various activities. " J 

Before passing to a consideration of the functional psychology 
with its implications for our problem, there are still some move- 
ments that are out of the general stream of thought that we should 
note. 

1. In the first place, positivism is a movement with which we 
shall have to reckon. Positivism owes its genesis to Auguste Comte 
(1 798-1857), who began by saying that human thought had passed 
through two stages and is now entering a third. Of these the first 
is the theological stage, the chief characteristic of which is animism. 
The second is the metaphysical stage when things that exist are 
accounted for by philosophical substances. The third stage, which 

x E. S. Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, p. 289. 



24 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

is the one upon which the race is now entering, is the positive. We 
do not look for spirits nor metaphysical substances nor gods, but 
we try to discover empirically the laws which bind us together. On 
this basis Comte proceeded to a classification of the sciences, in 
which he begins with mathematics and ends with sociology. But 
the striking thing is that in his classification of the sciences Comte 
did not find a place for psychology. The mechanical way in which 
he has dealt with the history of the race is evidence of his lack of 
psychological sympathy. And the result is just what we might 
expect of one who neglects psychology. God is ruled out of the 
game, and religion is curbed by an over-intellectualism. The 
center of interest is humanity, which he capitalizes as "Le Grand 
Etre" and elevates to a place of worship. In this way Comte 
attempts to keep religion in the real world in which science also 
moves, and attempts to find a synthetic relationship between the 
two disciplines. When human culture attains its highest level, 
then religion will pass away. Its place will be taken by sociology, 
which is the Rome to which all the roads of the sciences lead. In 
the meantime Comte recognizes the utility of the religious illusion, 
and he himself proceeds to build up a cult of humanity by a whole- 
sale borrowing from the Catholic liturgy. 

2. Scientific agnosticism is the name which has been given to 
the system which has been propounded by Herbert Spencer (1820- 
1903). The contribution to thought for which his name is famed 
is the doctrine of the Unknowable. In his Principles of Psychology 
Spencer proposes to explain the activities of human mind geneti- 
cally, but in the question of the relation between psychosis and 
neurosis, of mind and matter, he is vague. His mechanical evo- 
lutionary scheme leads him to suggest that the mind is composed 
of homogeneous units of consciousness, similar to nervous shocks, 
each of which finds a parallel in the physical movements of nature. 
At the same time he posits substance as an unknowable substratum 
of phenomena, and speaks of the relation of the mind to matter as a 
relation of two unknowable substances, and therefore something 
which is to be left to the province of the Unknowable. This 
unknowableness which he finds in his psychological investigations 
he carries into his other fields, where he deals with our problem of 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 25 

the relation of religion to science. It is his conviction that science 
and religion alike must reach the conclusion that the "most certain 
of all facts is that the Power which the universe manifests to us is 
utterly inscrutable." Religion is the unknown and unknowable 
mystery. Science too has to recognize that the ultimate source of 
things is unknowable. For Spencer science is positive and religion 
is negative. It is sufficient from his point of view to demonstrate 
that positive science is unable to cover the whole range of ex- 
perience. Religion is a sense of mystery, and that involves an 
agnostic element. In science the more our knowledge increases, 
the larger seems the field of nescience. So Spencer found that a 
reconciliation between these two spheres is possible only as each of 
them realizes that neither of them can dominate over the other, 
and that both in the end have to come to the ultimate reality of 
things to find their legitimate place, and, as we have seen, that 
ultimate reality is Unknowable. So we find in Spencer the same 
sort of agnosticism in his attempts to deal with the problem of the 
relationship between science and religion as have characterized his 
psychological dissertations. 

3. Another movement that demands attention is evolutionistic 
monism, of which the leading exponents are Haeckel and Ostwald. 
Monism means the fundamental unifying of all thinking and acting. 
It desires to eliminate root and branch the last vestige of super- 
naturalism. Science insists on having the whole field to itself. 
Religion is not to be permitted to enjoy an independent field at all. 
Haeckel proposes a monism of substance. Under the laws of 
substance he would unite the scientific laws of the conservation of 
energy and of the conservation of matter. Matter and energy, 
he claimed, are two separate attributes of the fundamental sub- 
stance. He arrives at a virtual hylozoism, since he regards energy 
and spirit as one. According to his system, psychology is merely 
a branch of physiology, and psychical activity is nothing more 
than a group of vital phenomena which depend entirely on physi- 
ological and material changes that are taking place in the proto- 
plasm of the organ. He says : 

Scientific psychology is a part of physiology, the doctrine of the functions 
and the life-activities of the organisms. The psychology and psychiatry 



26 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

of the future, like the physiology and pathology of today, must take the form 
of cellular study, and in the first instance investigate the soul-functions of 
the cells. 1 

Again he says: 

Consciousness, like feeling and willing, among the higher animals is a 
mechanical work of the ganglion-cells, and as such may be carried back to 
chemical and physical events in the plasma of these. 2 

So that for Haeckel every living cell was regarded as possess- 
ing psychical properties. In the case of Haeckel we have that 
happening which we might expect of one who places physiology 
completely over psychology. Religion is ruled out by science 
in the same summary fashion that psychology was ruled out 
by physiology. Haeckel was a biologist, and he was interested in 
getting an unbroken chain of causal connectedness on the basis of 
biological evolution. And for him the biological causal explana- 
tions of phenomena, which must form an unbroken series, does away 
with the necessity of or the place for a God. Religion, he takes for 
granted, deals with the miraculous, and since science by organizing 
a complete chain of causes does away with the miraculous, religion 
is left stranded on a shore that is barren of any material for the 
continuation of its work. 

The work of Haeckel has been carried on by Ostwald. The 
former was a biologist; the latter is a chemist. So that the funda- 
mental difference between the two men is to be found in the science 
in which each is interested. The constant factor is monism. 
Ostwald declared the laws of energy to be the laws of reality. These 
he summarized as (i) the law of the conservation of energy, and 
(2) the law of the dissipation of energy. The sum-total of energy 
remains the same, but there are some processes which cannot be 
reversed. For Ostwald energy was a sufficiently spiritualized 
concept that it was able to take care of all the phenomena of both 
the physical and psychical spheres. He even imitated Kant's 
categorical imperative with his energetic imperative: "Economize 
energy. " So that Ostwald in his system, which is an attempt to do 
away with the necessity of religion, is required to read into the 
mechanical concept emotional significance. In other words, he 

1 Ernst Haeckel, Monism, pp. 42, 43. 2 Ibid., pp. 47, 48. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 27 

has to borrow from that very field of life which in the beginning he 
had repudiated. And in the case of both of these evolutionistic 
monists, Haeckel and Ostwald, we see that the reduction of psy- 
chology has been accompanied with a reduction of religion, an 
apparent neglect to take account of all the facts of life resulting 
in this parallel reduction. 

V 

Contemporary psychological thought introduces us to a new 
stage in the history of the science. The change has been on the 
way ever since the time of Charles Darwin. 

With the coming of the evolution theory, especially in the form of the 
"natural selection" hypothesis of Darwin, considerations of origin, develop- 
ment, and growth came systematically into the natural sciences. Psychology 
in time felt the impulse; and gradually the genetic concept and method be- 
came current. The progress of Darwinism in the mental and moral sciences 
shows itself in certain of the departments of psychology in which specializa- 
tion has recently taken place: normal genetic psychology, child-psychology, 
animal-psychology, and race-psychology. 1 

Thus we see that the change is one of methodology. The evolu- 
tionistic hypothesis has worked its way into the study of the mental 
processes, as well as into the other biological processes. And the 
study of how things came to be is essentially a functional study. 
It is through the understanding of functions that we appreciate 
the evolving structures. We regard psychology now as taking its 
place among the biological sciences. The antithesis which was 
once thought to exist between the physical and the psychical has 
disappeared. The rationalistic philosophy of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries had as its corollary a rational or faculty 
psychology. Rationalism is logical; psychological science today 
is biological. The adoption of this biological point of view implies 
that consciousness must be studied in connection with the psycho- 
logical processes with which we have learned to deal genetically. 
The gist of the matter is that — 

the real human organism is a psycho-physical organism, and that the mental 
portion of it is not to be completely or correctly apprehended without reference 
to the physiological portion. The psycho-physical organism is, moreover, 

1 James Mark Baldwin, History of Psychology, II, 94. 



28 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

a real unit. The separation of the mind from the body which we commonly 
make in thinking about them is a separation made on behalf of some one of 
our theoretical or practical interests, and as such the separation is often 
serviceable. In actual life experience, however, the two things are never 
separated. 1 

Professor Angell gathers some of the evidence to establish his 
thesis of the essential unity of the psychical and the physical. 
Of the points of evidence he mentions (i) "that our consciousness 
or knowledge of the world depends primarily on our use of the 
senses," (2) "that the expressions of the mind ordinarily take the 
form of muscular movements which we call acts," (3) that a 
pathological condition of the brain is accompanied by a pathological 
condition in some portion of the conscious life. 2 When a man acts, 
we do not think of saying any more that his action is to be traced 
to some one of the life-processes which in that particular action 
shows itself to be evidently dominant at the time that the action 
takes place. But action is the result of the unified life-process 
responding to some stimulus. One element may be more affected 
than the other in the reaction to the stimulus, but the organism 
which responds is a unity. The reaction is the reaction of a single 
organism. As we shall presently see, this unity of the psycho- 
physical organism can scarcely be exaggerated in its importance 
for the specific problem which we are considering. 

That leads to the further remark that functional psychology 
is behavioristic. Formerly psychology was regarded as that 
science which, as Professor Ladd said, deals with the states of 
consciousness as such. But today, though it is still regarded as 
the science of consciousness, it is not the science of states so much 
as a science of phenomena. It deals with facts, and attempts to 
classify its observations in much the same way that the botanist 
or the zoologist deals with his materials. The life-processes are 
motor as well as mental, and the motor phenomena give us the key 
to the mental, so that human behavior furnishes psychology with 
the data for the interpretation of human creations. The study of 
that which is done is the primary thing. The social psychologist 
helps us materially at this point with his description of the rise of 

1 J. R. Angell, Psychology, p. 8. 2 Ibid., pp. 13-15. 



THE INFLUENCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY 29 

consciousness. He deals with behavior, with the act as the starting- 
point. Action is determined by the instinctive impulse directed 
toward the satisfaction of some felt need. There are certain in- 
fluences which tend to reinforce and others which tend to inhibit 
the impulse. Sometimes by association one impulse will tend to 
call forth another. Again, one impulse may function as an inhibi- 
tion to another. Now consciousness arises from the necessity for 
a selective process, picking out the impulse which it will set free, 
and also the forms which it will utilize for the satisfaction of the 
impulses. Thus consciousness arises in a social process, whereby 
the act, which is social, is made the bond of connection between 
the subject-self and the object-self. This means that there is a 
whole mass of data, which hitherto psychology has passed over 
superficially, which now affords the psychologist a laboratory in 
which to work, viz., the study of the instincts, impulses, habits, 
attitudes, actions, functions, etc. In other words, the data of 
functional psychology are concrete and biological, whereas those 
of the older psychology were abstract and logical. 

The conception of psychology as a biological science carries 
with it certain implications for us. It is, to be sure, a part of that 
larger movement which makes all science biological in the sense 
that it is a servant of life, so that the only excuse for scientific 
labor in any field is that it may minister to and enrich life, giving it 
a better technique of control over the mechanical environment. 
But, to be more specific, the treatment of psychology as a biological 
science means that the mind is to be regarded not as an entity 
but as an instrument, "an instrument of adaptation by which the 

organism adjusts itself to the environment The conception 

of the mind as an instrument of adjustment and adaptation is a 
biological conception, and marks the radical transformation which 
psychology has undergone through the influence of the science of 
biology. ' '* We have a parallelism in the pragmatic notion of the 
instrumental character of ideas. In theology it gives us an instru- 
mental doctrine of the character of religious dogmas and formulas. 
The meaning of this doctrine of instrumentalism, whether it be 
employed in psychology, philosophy, or theology, means that life 

*E. S. Ames, The Psychology of Religiaus Experience, p. 15. 



30 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

is made the center of interest, and that all these instruments are so 
named from their ability to function as ministers to the developing 
life-processes. This gives to us a method for dealing with religion 
and science. The instrumental doctrine is valid here also, as in 
all other spheres. Our religious knowledge and our scientific 
knowledge, and equally art, morality, politics, etc., are instruments 
in the service of life as it makes its adjustments and adaptations 
within the environment which is the sphere of experience. Religion 
and science arose biologically as ministers to life, just as surely as 
did the eye or the ear. They do something for life which life needs 
to have done for it. "That ye may have life, and that ye may have 
it more abundantly " is the underlying motive of both religion and 
science. 

The thesis which I propose is that religion and science are 
differentiable attitudes toward the extra-human environment, 
involving specific ends and techniques for the attainment of those 
ends, and that these attitudes are the outgrowth of those ineradi- 
cable tendencies of life which we call innate and instinctive, so that 
both genetically and functionally they may be said to be biological. 

Inasmuch as the differentiation of the various disciplines of 
life — religion, science, aesthetics, ethics, et alia — has a functional 
evolution, and is not localizable in the behavior of primitive 
peoples, the order of procedure is determined for us as : 

i. An attempt to define the differentia of the religious and 
scientific attitudes, or the question of their psycho-physical func- 
tions. 

2. An endeavor to discover the genetic elements in the innate 
and instinctive behavior out of which these differentiated attitudes 
have evolved, or the question of their psycho-physical genesis. 



CHAPTER III 
THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

The differentiation between religion and science, on a psycho- 
logical basis, is to be made in the realm of attitudes. It is the 
intent of this chapter to make such an examination of these atti- 
tudes as will make clear in what respects they may be differentiated. 

A functional point of view in psychology, as we have observed, 
is concerned with an organism which is regarded as a unity. It is 
impossible to separate man in the ways that either the dualists or 
the faculty psychologists tried to do. The psychical and the 
physical aspects of life are inextricably woven together. So the 
cognitive, the affective, and the conative phases of the mental 
processes are strands interwoven in the warp and woof of a unified 
life. Religion and science are to be interpreted in that light as 
products of human life which is regarded as an organic unity. 
There are no mental compartments or pigeonholes which have 
served as molds for these two disciplines, and into which they may 
be fitted ad libitum. 

The real differentiation of religion and science, considered 
psychologically, is to be found in the realm of attitudes. By an 
attitude I mean a disposition to attend or to act in a specific manner. 
Contemporary psychologists regard attitudes as the unifying 
agency in mental life, and the attitudes of habit (i.e., of conserv- 
ing the type) and of accommodation (i.e., of modifying the type) as 
the manner in which mental development proceeds through the 
organization of experience. The religious attitude is, therefore, a 
habitual disposition to seize upon the spiritual elements of the 
extra-human environment and to organize and conserve them in 
the interests of life. In differentiation from that, the scientific 
attitude may be described as the habitual disposition to make 
adjustment to and to gain control of the mechanical forces in the 
extra-human environment for the sake of life. 1 

1 To be sure, there are other attitudes which may be and are assumed under certain 
circumstances; as, e.g., the moral, which is the disposition to enter into mutually 
desirable social relationships with the human environment; and the aesthetic, which 
is the disposition to appreciate the beautiful in the environment. 

3i 



32 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

i. It will be apparent that the position adhered to is in har- 
mony with that so ably defended by Dr. Watson in tracing the 
differentia in terms of a " social" as against a " mechanical' '* 
attitude toward the non-human environment. 2 I choose this dif- 
ferentiation as basic because, in the first place, it is broad enough 
and generic enough to present the psychological difference between 
religions and sciences, speaking collectively; and in the second 
place, because the definitions include all the historical phenomena 
with which we have to deal. Many of the so-called definitions of 
religion are selective rather than definitive. An extreme illustra- 
tion is in the statement of the fabled bishop who said: "By religion, 
I mean the Christian religion; by the Christian religion, I mean 
Protestantism; and by Protestantism, I mean the Church of 
England." This is simply an absurd illustration of a selective 
process determining a man's definition. In a similar way some 
have called everything pseudo-science which does not harmonize 
with revelation and tradition. 

Spencer and Gillen in their work on the tribes of Central 
Australia refer to one particular tribe, the Aruntas, who, so far 
as they could discover, had no gods. Yet they had a totemistic 
system with elaborate ceremonials, such as the "intichuima" 
ceremony for the increasing of the supply of the totem animal, in 
their case the kangaroo or emu. 3 This is a definite attempt to 
socialize with the extra-human environment, and who shall deny 
that the attitude is religious ? 

Again let me refer to Hinayana Buddhism. Many of the 
definitions of religion which have been formulated have been forced 
to regard Hinayana Buddhism as merely a philosophy and to 
reject it as a religion, the reason being that the definition of religion 

1 The words "mechanical" and "mechanistic" are used in this thesis in the philo- 
sophical rather than the physical sense, i.e., as antithetical to organic. 

2 A. C. Watson, "The Logic of Religion," in the American Journal of Theology, 
II, 81-101, 244-65. The definition of religion used by C. H. Toy is in agreement with 
this position: "Religion is man's attitude toward the universe regarded as a social 
and ethical force; it is the sense of social solidarity with objects regarded as powers, 
and the institution of social relations with them." — Introduction to the History of 
Religions, p. 1. 

3 Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 288 ff. 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 33 

used called for a deity or deities which did not come into Buddhism 
until the Mahay ana period. Yet it seems to me that a careful 
reading of such literature as the Dhamma Pada must impress the 
reader with the fervor of a soul striving to make a real religious 
adjustment — a social attitude toward the cosmos. No definition 
of religion is big enough which excludes Buddhism, even in its 
earlier form. 

So too the definition of science may be defended for its breadth 
as well as its precision. Astrology was superseded by astronomy, 
and alchemy gave way to chemistry. Nevertheless each of these 
were expressions of a mechanical attitude toward the extra-human 
environment which it would be incorrect to leave out of account 
in a historical account of the sciences. Science is not confined of 
necessity to that which is true, any more than religion, but a 
scientific attitude is assumed in all the efforts to gain control over 
the non-human environment by the use of a mechanistic technique, 
however imperfect. 

In religion and science we are not dealing with two separate 
environments, but we have two techniques for dealing with the 
same environment. The assumption of one attitude does not 
preclude one from assuming another toward the same object. Nor 
does the use of one technique prevent the other. Consider the 
rainbow as an example. The scientist with his mechanical out- 
look is able to explain it as the result of the refraction of light on 
water. The artist with his aesthetic point of view sees it to be a 
thing of beauty. The Hebrews, with their religious attitude, inter- 
preted it as the sign-language of Yahweh in social relationship with 
his people. Analogously in time of war the different attitudes 
appear with reference to the course of events. The religious inter- 
pretation sees a victory or a defeat as an indication of the presence 
of God in vindication of the right or in the humiliation of the 
erring. A scientific point of view measures victory or defeat in 
terms of preparedness and strategy. The differentia is in the type 
of the attitudes, both of which are perfectly legitimate because 
both are serviceable. 

Leuba explains the differentiation between religion and science 
behavioristically. He says: " Anthropomorphic behavior becomes 



34 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

religion when it is directed to gods, and the mechanical becomes 
science when the principle of quantitative proportion it implies is 
definitely recognized." 1 Doubtlessly he is on the right track, but 
his conclusions are all of them discounted somewhat because his 
definition of religion restricts it to a belief in supernatural agencies 
of ontological reference to which man relates himself. 2 

The objection may be raised that the differentiation of religion 
and science on the basis of a social versus a mechanical attitude 
breaks down when one comes to examine such sciences as sociology, 
ethnology, and anthropology where the subject-matter is persons, 
not things. The answer is that the sociologist, the ethnologist, and 
the anthropologist have, to be sure, to adopt a social attitude when 
in the practical business of collecting their data. But the scientific 
task itself is not concerned with people but with the data, the 
objective facts which the scientist has gathered and which he treats 
quite mechanically. If he is unable to abandon, even temporarily, 
his social attitude, he may be a good social worker, but he vitiates 
his ability to become a thorough scientist. 

It seems to me to be another way of describing the same situa- 
tion to say that the religious attitude is one of participation as 
against the scientific, which is analytical. 3 The gain of control over 
all forces in the environment to aid in the struggle for existence is 
the purpose of both. Religion seeks to obtain that control by 
means of a social participation with the process, conceived in 
personal terms. Science, by means of analysis and reflection, puts 
us in a position to deal more efficiently by mechanical means with 
a fragment of experience. The technique developed in the former 
instance is the cult; in the latter case it is the intellectual and 
material tools of the theoretical and practical sciences. 

2. Another point of differentiation between religion and 
science is that religion is concerned with life in its totality, whereas 
science concerns itself with certain specific situations. It is a 
characteristic of the social attitude which men take toward the 

1 J. H. Leuba, The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion, p. 75. 

2 Ibid., p. 44. 

3 This distinction was unfolded by Professor E. S. Ames in his lectures in the 
Psychology of Religion, Philosophy 60, University of Chicago, autumn, 1016. 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 35 

extra-human environment that they regard it in the aggregate. 
In worship and in all his endeavors to establish a spiritual fellow- 
ship, man acts as though he regarded the power or powers toward 
whom he assumes the social attitude as of cosmic significance. 
Whether the supermundane world be considered monotheistically 
as in Christianity and Mohammedanism, pantheistically as in 
Stoicism and Brahmanism, or pantheonically as in the Vedic and 
Roman religions, religion is regarded as putting one into relation- 
ship with the extra-physical environment in its wholeness. The 
means employed to establish that relationship vary with the cul- 
tural state of the people from flattery, bribery, and gaudy gifts to 
social and missionary service, ethically conceived. Religion thus 
interprets the world as a totality in terms of social relationships 
which are with a view to living with it in such a way as to secure 
satisfaction for the spiritual life. 

In contrast with the religious attitude, the scientific attitude 
concerns itself with only a fragment of life. The sciences are only 
developed sufficiently to provide man with a technique for a 
mechanical manipulation of a small percentage of his environment. 
And any one science concerns itself with a still smaller group of 
phenomena within that range. So that the scientific attitude at 
any one time is necessarily selective. One evidence of the selective 
process in science is that a thoroughly scientific manipulation 
depends upon the situation being repeated frequently enough to 
enable observation that will lead to generalization and the develop- 
ment of a technique. The scientific attitude is one of observation 
in the interest of mechanically calculable manipulations, and the 
human powers of observation imply a process of selection. As 
Professor Mead has said: "The scientist always deals with an 
actual problem, and even when he looks before and after he does 
so far as he is facing in inquiry some actual problem. No actual 
problem could conceivably take on the form of a conflict involving 
the whole world of meaning." 1 

3. Another way of expressing the differentiation between the 
religious and scientific attitudes is to say that the former is an 
evaluatory and the latter an explanatory attitude. Professor 

1 G. H. Mead, chapter on "Scientific Method" in Creative Intelligence, p. 219. 



36 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

Hoffding has the merit of making that distinction clear in the 
epistemological section of his great work on the philosophy of 
religion. "Only against their will," he says, "was it gradually 
borne in on the representatives of religion that it was no part of 
the work of religion to supply a scientific explanation of the world. 
What is now commonplace in the mouth of theologians, viz., that 
we must not look to the Bible to teach us natural science, could 
not get a hearing in the days of Bruno, Galileo and Spinoza." 1 
The scientific temperament is historically a later development than 
the religious. It was impossible, as we have seen, to have a 
thoroughly scientific attitude so long as the deductive method held 
the field. But the introduction of induction involved a more 
mechanical way of approach, as it freed man for untrammeled 
observation and experimentation leading to a mechanical technique, 
whereas deduction meant subjugation to authority, and in that 
sense had sometimes a measure of social reference. Science was 
under the domination of the church, and the earliest scientists were 
priests. It was only gradually that science won her freedom. The 
result has been that some scholars have declared religion to be the 
mother of science as well as of art, philosophy, and their sister- 
disciplines. Historically there is a measure of truth in the idea, 
for it was out from the church that the sciences gradually gained 
their emancipation, until the scientific attitude came to be regarded 
as having a right to an independent existence. 2 On the psycho- 
logical side, however, it would be better to speak of the gradual 
differentiation of the two attitudes, one from the other, than of 
the evolution of one of them out of the other. 

The result of the long domination of the church over science, 
coupled with the use of the deductive method, meant that religion 
was continually trying to assume a scientific role. It indulged in 
the business of explanation, i.e., of placing phenomena in their 

1 Harold Hoffding, The Philosophy of Religion, pp. 14, 15. 

2 Friedrich Daab, in his essay, "Religion und Wissenschaft," in Das Suchen der 
Zeit, V (1909), 123, quotes with approval from Friedrich Ritzel: "Die Religion der 
Kulturarmen Volker faszt alle Keime in sich, die spater den herrlichen, blutemreicher 
Wald des Geisteslebens der Kulturvolker bilden sollen; sie ist Kunst und Wissen- 
schaft, Theologie und Philosophie zugleich, so dasz es nichts von noch so feme her auf 
ldeales Hinstrebendes in diesem armen Leben gift, das nicht von ihr umfaszt wiirden." 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 37 

causal sequence, with the results which are too well known to need 
delineation. The real interest of religion was a socialization of 
the environment, so that explanation became a reference to God, 
and the tools were Aristotelian. The First Person of the Christian 
Trinity was described as the Prime Mover, himself unmovable, 
the First Cause, himself uncaused. Consequently a thoroughly 
scientific explanation of phenomena was not forthcoming because 
the attitude of religion was social and not mechanical. It was due 
to the observations and hypotheses of Galileo, as we have seen, that 
this old world of thought eventually passed away. He stated the 
law of the pendulum, which furnished an instance of self-motion 
in opposition to the mediaeval notion of God-originated motion. 
And from the self-motion of the pendulum there began to evolve 
the scientific notion of causality, the conception of relativity, and 
the age of freedom. Likewise the reference of phenomena to a 
First Cause was seen to be simply an acknowledgment of scientific 
agnosticism, and with the progress of scientific knowledge the 
plausibility of religious explanations was hazarded. 

Those who are fearful that the advance of science carries with 
it as a necessary corollary the corrosion of religion are under the 
domination of that mediaeval conception of the business of religion, 
viz., that religion is concerned with ultimate causes, in contrast 
with science, which was deemed to be concerned with proximate 
causes. Should science make such strides of progress that the time 
would come when she would be able to give a thorough causal 
account of phenomena, what would become of religion? If her 
business were to give a religious explanation as against a scientific 
explanation, she would be in danger of being retired. But religion 
has discovered that there are things to be done about phenomena 
other than explaining them. Science deals with time, space, cause, 
motion, number, etc., and there is no appraisal in any of these 
concepts. After science has finished her task, be it ever so com- 
plete, in explaining any phenomenon, there still remains the religious 
task of evaluating it for human life. So that advancement of 
science has meant in the long run the emancipation of religion for 
her real task, as well as the liberation of science for greater efficiency 
within her own domain. 



38 TEE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

Now the religious attitude is one of evaluation, in which the 
subject seeks to appreciate the significance or extract the meaning 
from phenomena as instruments for the furtherance of human 
welfare. This point has been so ably developed by recent writers 1 
that it seems to be unnecessary for the purposes of this thesis to 
do more than make a statement. The valuational attitude is 
essentially one of appreciation of worthfulness which grows as the 
environment is related socially to the individual or the group. 
" Certain elements in the life of a people come to consciousness as 
having peculiar value, and therefore the religious attitude is a 
special case of the larger sense of value." 2 The " peculiar value" 
which these elements possess by virtue of which they give rise to 
the religious attitude is that they are serviceable to the individual 
or to the group in the business of obtaining spiritual reinforcement 
by the use of a social technique. Value is essentially a relativized 
social concept, and it takes the character of a religious value when 
that social relationship is given cosmic reference. Certain events 
make such impress on a man and influence him in such a way that 
those events have the value of God to him. He sees in them more 
than the mechanism of law, more than determinism, though he 
may at the same time accept the causal explanation which is 
presented as he views the events scientifically. When a great 
catastrophe occurs, the scientist seeks the causal sequence of 
events leading up to the catastrophe with a view to preventing a 
recurrence, in the belief that "prevention is better than cure"; 
but the religious man, while accepting the explanation of the 
scientist as quite satisfactory, still claims the legitimate right to 
obtain spiritual worth from the event by interpreting its signifi- 
cance in terms of a vocal expression in a social relationship. Science 
provides the explanation; religion extracts the meaning. And 
again I say the evaluatory attitude of the religious consciousness 
is every whit as legitimate as the explanatory attitude of the 
scientific temperament because it functions as a powerful aid to 
man in the struggle for existence. 

1 Cf . HofFding, The Philosophy of Religion; Irving King, The Development of 
Religion; Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience; Watson, The Logic of 
Religion; and Wright, The Evolution of Values from Instincts. 

2 Irving King, The Development of Religion, p. 215. 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 39 

Hoffding has formulated his definition of religion in terms of 
value, defining it as "the conservation of value." 1 He was doubt- 
less right in conceiving the question of value to be a great concern 
of religion. But the difficulty is that the definition rests upon the 
assumption that values are already in existence, and leaves no 
room for the achievement of new values. It fails to provide for 
the creative element in the religious valuational attitude. We may 
apply to the question of values one of the differentiations which 
Professor Daab makes between religion and science, viz., "Die 
Religion schafft; die Wissenschaft entdeckt." 2 

4. Herbert Spencer answered the query as to the possibility 
of religion and science coexisting by saying that it is possible, 
since it is a fact that they do co-exist. He differentiated the 
attitudes, making religion qualitative as compared with the quan- 
titative attitude of science. Religion has for its object the Abso- 
lute, and hence deals with the inscrutable. The sciences attempt 
a classification of objects and data according to their resemblance. 
Thus the religious attitude is essentially qualitative, whereas the 
scientific attitude is rather quantitative or mathematical. 

It is something of the same idea which Professor Daab has in 
mind in saying : "Die Religion erhebt ; die Wissenschaft berechnet. 
Die Religion wagt; die Wissenschaft wagt." 3 It should be fairly 
clear that if science is to furnish us with a mechanical technique 
of control, it must work that out by a consideration of mathematical 
relationships, by calculating and weighing the data with which it 
has to deal. Especially is this illustrated in the mathematical and 
physical sciences. On the other hand, the way to the organization 
of a social control is by taking a risk, if need be, and living through 
experience, and then seeking to interpret its significance in terms 
of cosmic relationships. 

It is of the nature of science to calculate as accurately as pos- 
sible, to endeavor to understand causal relationships as logically 
and chronologically as possible, and then to organize a technique 
by means of hypotheses and laws, which are its tools for controlling 
the future. But the tools for future control are forged but of the 

1 Hoffding, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 12. 

2 Daab, op. tit., pp. 123 ff. 3 Ibid. 



40 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

calculated materials of the past. Religion, on the other hand, is 
more ready to venture to manipulate tools forged out of untried 
materials. True, science has its faith and makes ventures in 
formulating hypotheses, but science as a rule does not attempt to 
construct machinery except with materials brought from the past. 
Religion is constantly constructing new machinery, but frequently 
goes farther and creates the materials that it puts into the machin- 
ery. The calculations of science are determined by the past; the 
adventures of religion are frequently in the face of a past which 
seems to insure failure. 

There is a good reason for the venturesomeness of religion in 
spite of the calculations of science, viz., that in religion we are 
dealing with relationships that are social as against the mechanical 
in science. Science handles its materials as things; religion regards 
both subjects and objects as social. It is a characteristic of per- 
sonality that future behavior is only partially determinable by 
past behavior. When we are dealing with the inorganic world, 
and when we are dealing with reflexive and instinctive behavior in 
the organic world, we are able to tabulate our results pretty accu- 
rately, so that we can predict the future with reference to the 
past. But this method breaks down when we are dealing with the 
conscious behavior of human beings. The conative process of con- 
sciousness enables a man to do something quite different, under 
the same stimulus, from what he had done previously. The 
religious attitude, involving as it does a relationship conceived in 
personal terms, dares to neglect the quantitative element and to 
venture upon a line of action, urged on the one hand by the felt 
needs of life and on the other hand by its conception of the nature 
of that person or power with whom it is socializing. So we con- 
clude that the differentiation into qualitative and quantitative 
relationships is a corollary of the social and mechanical. 

5. There is another way in which we may express this differ- 
entiation, viz., by stating that the religious attitude is subjective 
and the scientific attitude is objective. For the simple reason that 
scientists are human, it is impossible to deny that there is a sub- 
jective element in the attitude of many scientists. Indeed, the 
very selective process which belongs to the work of the scientist is 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 41 

in a measure subjective. On the other hand, I do not wish to 
deny by this statement the validity of the religious object. The 
latter belongs to the metaphysical implications of our problem and 
does not concern us at this point. But the point which I wish to 
make clear is that science tries to deal at first hand with the actual 
data under consideration, and in a thoroughly objective way. 
And because the attitude of science is mechanical, there is less of 
the affective element and more of the cognitive. On the contrary 
the religious object is an idealization, and consequently the felt 
needs involve the introduction of an affective element. 

The historic struggle between science and religion has been in 
reality a struggle between two world- views. Science offers to us 
a naturalistic world-view, presents us a world calculated in the 
formulas of determinism. Religion offers to us an idealistic world- 
view, presents a world formed out of images created in response 
to our felt needs. In either case there is teleology to this extent, 
that the formulation has resulted from the struggle for existence, 
and that both are instrumental and functional, and are serviceable 
to the individual and to society in the expansion of the life- 
processes. 

The differentiation between religion and science, stated in psy- 
chological terms, is a matter that concerns the types of images 
employed. The primal form of ideas in human experience is the 
sense-idea which originates as a direct image of the sense-object. 
Sensations are the first ways in which consciousness functions, the 
simplest form of cognition. The association of ideas has its cor- 
relate in brain activity. So that when two simple brain-processes 
have been contemporaneous or one immediately succeeds the other, 
the recurrence of the first tends to stimulate the recurrence of the 
second. The principle of association affords an explanation of the 
reproduction of an idea or image in memory. The chain of ideas 
by which an occurrence in the past is imaged in consciousness is 
simply the operation of the machinery of association which has 
its physiological correlate in neural processes. Sensations are 
regarded as so modifying the organism that copies of them arise in 
consciousness even when the original stimulus is lacking. No 
ideas and no images ever occur within consciousness which have 



42 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

i 

not sometime had an external stimulus. Sometimes returning 
images are simply reproductions of the original sense-images; at 
other times they combine elements original to various sense- 
experiences. When the image is reproductive of the past in some 
detail, it is known as a memory-image or recollection; when it is 
a picture combining elements from various past sense-images, it is 
given the name of imagination. The memory-image is a recall in 
as much concrete detail as possible of the original sense-image, 
whereas in imagination it is not possible to trace the details to any 
one original sense-object. Yet the function of imagination is just 
as real as that of recollection. 

It is accepted by a large school of psychological scholars that 
there can be no thinking apart from the use of images. The 
thought-processes may be described as a flux and flow within con- 
sciousness of images of varying types. In other words, images are 
the stuff of which thoughts are constituted. That which differen- 
tiates is the end or purpose of the thinking process. It is the desire 
of science to scrutinize and observe its objects as closely as pos- 
sible with the aim of attaining a causal explanation and ultimately 
a mechanical technique with which kinetically to manipulate the 
future. The scientist aims to preclude as completely as possible 
the subjective element, and yet at times when he is formulating a 
hypothesis he purposely combines imagery in the trial-and-error 
method of seeking a solution to his problem. On the other hand, 
the effort of the religious man to socialize the extra-human environ- 
ment involves a continual interplay of images. Sense-experiences 
give rise to images, some of which by association are connected 
with pleasurable and others with painful experiences. In religion 
the elements of sense-images are combined in accordance with felt 
needs, the process of combination being determined in considerable 
measure by the social mind. The ideas of a devil or a hell of tor- 
ment are images, the elements of which are painful sensations in 
the experiences of the past. The conception of a heavenly city or a 
heavenly Father are constructions of the image-making disposition 
of consciousness, the elements of which are sense-images which 
have been associated with experiences of pleasure or comfort. 
Psychologically speaking, the imagery involved in the scientists' 



THE DIFFERENTIA OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 43 

hypothesis is of a piece with that involved in the faith of the 
religious man. 

We have here also an explanation of the social character of 
Christian doctrine which Professor Mathews has pointed out so 
clearly. 1 Theological expression hinges upon the prevalent social 
concepts for the precise reason that imagination depends upon 
sense-images for its building material. An image of a tiger-god 
could never arise where people had no sense-images of tigers. A 
conception of a god of thunder implies the sense-image of thunder. 
So also the conception of the Christian God such as Anselm presents 
in terms of feudalism was the necessary product of an age when the 
sense-images of the people were formed in a feudalistic environment. 

This fundamental difference between religion and science enters 
into our approach to actual problems. The business of the scientist, 
as we have seen, is to take an objective, analytical attitude in 
obtaining a mechanical technique. If he admits any fantasy into 
the data with which he is dealing, his work will be jeopardized, 
and he is liable to be drawn into making metaphysical assumptions. 
The only legitimate place for the scientist to create new imagery 
out of sense-experiences is in the hypothesis-forming activity. On 
the other hand, the religious attitude involves the facing of problems 
with which scientific technique cannot help us. The question of 
immortaHty, e.g., is not one about which we can make observations 
in the scientific sense because it takes us into the realm of the 
imagination where the technique which was designed for the world 
of purely sense-experiences does not function. Religion interprets 
the meaning of human life no less really than science, but it does 
so by the use of a different sort of technique. Moreover, the 
difference m technique was necessary to cope with the different 
situations arising because of different attitudes. But the social 
attitude and its imagery are as truly the servants of life as the 
mechanical attitude and its imagery. 

1 Shatter Mathews, "Theology and the Social Mind," in the Biblical World, 
XL VI, 201-48. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE SEARCH FOR A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 

As stated in the conclusion of the second chapter, the proposi- 
tion of this thesis is that the religious and scientific attitudes have 
their psycho-physical genesis in the innate and instinctive behavior 
of life. As a basis for inquiry into this problem it is necessary to 
obtain a scientific definition of instinctive behavior. This chapter 
is devoted to that attempt. 

The attempt to find the genesis of religion and science in the 
instinctive life of the race is by no means novel. But the accounts 
which have been given have been disparate because of the changing 
content of the concepts employed. There has been no unifying 
conception as to what is meant by the words " instinct " and 
"instinctive," so that the relative bearing of instinctive behavior 
in the formation of the religious and scientific attitudes has not 
been treated with any degree of uniformity. 

It will be of service to us in the delineation of our task if we can 
come to an understanding of the sense in which the term " instinct' ' 
is used by contemporaneous scientists. Let us assume that the 
phenomena of instincts are physiological, and that they " represent 
structurally preformed pathways in the nervous system." 1 On 
this basis it should be apparent that biology is the science which 
should decide for us what content we shall put into our definition. 
The use which psychology should make of the term is fundamentally 
dependent on the findings of biology. Since the days of Charles 
Darwin a great deal of valuable experimentation has been con- 
ducted in this field, but so much remains to be done that it will be 
well to recognize the tentative character of any hypotheses that 
may be set forth. 

The works of such men as Jacques Loeb, Father Wasmann, 
G. A. Reid, C. Lloyd Morgan, C. S. Sherrington, R. M. Yerkes, 
and H. S. Jennings are helping toward the formation of a correct 

1 Angell, op. cit., p. 339. 

44 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 45 

definition from a biological standpoint. The laboratory investiga- 
tions of scores of scholars are all bringing light to the problem. 
Unfortunately the conclusions of some men are discounted in 
biological circles because their treatment of instincts is set by a 
preconceived philosophical theory. Lloyd Morgan, whose work 1 
in the biological treatment of instincts is reckoned by scientists as 
the most authoritative, criticizes the conclusions of Hans Driesch 
as dominated by his idea of "entelechy," those of Henri Bergson 
as shaped by his "elan vital," and those of William McDougall as 
unduly influenced by his animistic theory of a " psychic entity." 
All such ideas, like Plato's Idea, Berkeley's Eternal Spirit, and 
Kant's Transcendental Ego, are concerned with a source or agency 
underlying the process, creating it, and directing its course. They 
are metaphysical questions and hinder an absolutely objective 
treatment of the subject. 2 The purely scientific attitude, as we 
have seen, is analytical and logical, but not interpretative. Con- 
sequently metaphysical considerations must not enter into a thor- 
oughly scientific definition of instinct. 

Some definitions have been criticized because they are too 
simple. Herbert Spencer's " compound reflex action" is too 
meager. 3 Other definitions need to be remodeled because of the 
light shed from subsequent laboratory experimentation. Darwin, 
if still alive, would probably see that it was a doubtful procedure 
to apply the term " instinctive " to the emotions, unless in a second- 
ary sense. It is somewhat surprising to find Driesch including in 
his definition of instinct as a complicated reaction the phrase 
"that is perfect the very first time," 4 which would a priori spell 
the impossibility of modifiability and of progress. 

Still another group of definitions is criticized because they 
tend to be over-psychological, to the neglect of the data which are 
furnished by biology. William James defined instinct as "the 
faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without 

1 Habit and Instinct, 1896; Animal Behavior, iqoo; Instinct and Experience, 
1912; "Instinct," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (nth ed.), XIV, 648 ff. 

2 Lloyd Morgan, Instinct and Experience, pp. viii, 137. 

3 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, I, 427. 

4 Hans Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism (1908 volume), p. no. 



46 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the per- 
formance. " x Parmelee trenchantly criticized this definition be- 
cause (i) it is so vague that it " might cover a tropism or a simple 
reflex action, " (2) "it makes instinct necessarily purposeful in 
its character," which is very objectionable, and (3) it is not 
explicit in showing the hereditary character of instinct. 2 The 
definition of William McDougall is a good example of an over- 
emphasis of the psychic element. His conclusion is that we "may 
define an instinct as an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposi- 
tion which determines its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention 
to, objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement 
of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act 
in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an 
impulse to such action. " 3 Parmelee again has the credit of pointing 
out the weakness in this definition: (1) He regards instinct as 
psycho-physical, and his definition includes cognitive, affective, 
and conative elements, but biological investigation has shown 
that instinctive action is sometimes devoid of any psychical element. 
(2) The terms "to perceive" and "to pay attention" involve a 
consciousness which is not necessarily present. (3) The "emo- 
tional excitement" which McDougall posits is not the concom- 
tant of all instincts. 4 

Biological investigation has reached certain conclusions as to 
the characteristics of instinctive behavior which lead to definiteness: 

1. It is a congenital mode of behavior in differentiation from an 
acquired mode which involves intelligence. Driesch thinks that 
it is "perfect the very first time." 5 Lloyd Morgan would modify 
that by saying that it is " serviceable on the occasion of its first 
appearance." 6 But that it is congenital, biologists agree. It is 
characteristic of the species, and hence it is hereditary and structural. 
It requires no foresight before the behavior takes place, and hence 
is independent of prior experience. 

1 William James, The Principles of Psychology, I, 383. 

2 Maurice Parmelee, The Science of Human Behavior, pp. 223, 224. 

3 McDougall, Social Psychology, p. 29. 

4 Parmelee, ibid., pp. 218-21. s Driesch, op. ciL, II, no. 
6 Lloyd Morgan, Instinct and Experience, p. 22. 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 47 

2. It is characteristically performed by all the members of the 
group, and tends toward the well-being of the group or of the 
individual components of the group. 

3. Nevertheless it is capable of adaptability and modification 
under the guide of experience, in the same way that the structures 
themselves have the power of variability and adaptability. It is 
capable of stimulation and of obstruction whereby reinforcement 
or inhibition may take place, a fact of importance in the develop- 
ment of the various attitudes. 

4. It is relatively complex. In the words of Lloyd Morgan: 
"Such behavior is a more or less complex organic or biological 
response to a more or less complex group of stimuli of external and 
internal origin, and it is, as such, wholly dependent on how the 
organism and especially the nervous system and brain-centres 
have been built through heredity under the racial preparation 
which we call biological evolution. " x 

As to the matter of the neurosis of instinctive behavior, much 
work has been done, but the conclusions do not lay claim to finality. 
The fact that instincts are congenital dispositions to relatively 
definite types of behavior puts them on the same plane with trop- 
isms and reflexes. This has led Loeb to an identification of the 
three. We have noted the definition of Herbert Spencer in which 
he makes instincts compound reflex actions. Some writers, such 
as Romanes, have found the differentia by positing a conscious 
element in instinctive behavior which is absent from reflex action. 2 
The position which was taken by Spencer has been adopted by 
Lloyd Morgan, 3 Parmelee, 4 and Hobhouse, 5 viz., that instincts 
are complexes or co-ordinates of reflexes. Lloyd Morgan makes 
a further differentiation in claiming that instinctive action would 
involve the organism as a whole, whereas reflex action would not. 

Experiments in regard to the neural bases of reflexes, instincts, 
etc., are leading biologists to the conclusion that the lines of 
demarcation are by no means sharp, and the distinctions may be a 

x Op. tit., p. 5. 2 G. J. Romanes, Animal Intelligence, pp. 3, 17. 

3 Lloyd Morgan, Instinct and Experience, chap. iii. 

4 M. Parmelee, op. cit., p. 203. 

s L. T. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution, p. 53. 



48 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

matter of relative complexity. At the same time they are finding 

neural explanations for these distinctions. The simple reflex is a 

reaction due to the environmental stimulus of some afferent nerve 

which conducts the excitement through the spinal cord to the 

efferent nerves, which in turn connect with the muscles or glands 

where the action is effected. The reflex arc or path through which 

the stimulus is conducted from the sensory neurone to the motor 

neurone does not pass through the cerebrum. On the other hand, 

intelligent or voluntary behavior for the obtaining of precision 

necessitates the passing of the stimulus over pathways which lead 

to the cerebral centers. The property of consciousness has been 

located in the cerebral cortex, and hence behavior which involves 

experience and which is conative is due, on its neural side, to the 

functional activity of the cortical brain centers. Between these 

two types of behavior is the instinctive, which is more complex 

than reflexes and less so than intelligence. How is that to be 

explained physiologically? On the one hand, there is a practical 

agreement that instincts are co-ordinated reflexes. On the other 

hand, there is the problem of their relation to intelligence. On 

this latter point Lloyd Morgan and C. S. Sherrington have the 

credit of putting forth an attractive hypothesis. Morgan states 

it as follows : 

Intelligent guidance is the function of the cerebral cortex with its dis- 
tinguishing property of consciousness ; the co-ordination involved in instinctive 
behavior, and in the distribution of physiological forces to the viscera and 
vascular systems, is the primary function of the lower brain-centres; in instinct- 
ive behavior as such, consciousness correlated with processes in the cerebral 
cortex is, so to speak, a mere spectator of organic and biological occurrences 
at present beyond its control; but, as spectator, it receives information of 
these occurrences through the nerve-channels of connexion between the 
lower and the higher parts of the brain. 1 

This hypothesis, whereby he locates the co-ordinations involved in 
instinctive behavior in the subcortical brain centers, in the case of 
the higher vertebrates, is substantiated by experiments conducted 
by many biologists on decerebrate animals, i.e., animals which have 
had the cerebral hemispheres and cortex destroyed, but have the 
subcortical region and spinal cord intact. And so far as the investi- 
1 Lloyd Morgan, Instinct and Experience, pp. 7, 8. 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 49 

gations have been carried out, they have led to the conclusion that 
such animals are capable of behavior which, in the biological usage 
of the term, may be called instinctive. 

The importance of locating the neural center of instinctive 
behavior is apparent. If Morgan is correct, then we must con- 
clude that there is a considerable amount of instinctive behavior 
from which psychical elements are lacking. It does not deny, 
however, that when the cerebral cortex is present it functions 
in the assimilation of instinctive experience, thus conserving a 
" changing continuum of experience." 1 So that the control of 
instinctive behavior by the cerebral centers must be an " extension 
of the same processes as are operative in simultaneous and succes- 
sive combinations of reflexes. " 2 

The relative character of reflex, instinctive, and intelligent 
behavior leads some scientists to urge that it is more advisable to 
use the adjectival rather than the substantive form of the word. 
It is better to speak of instinctive behavior or tendencies or dis- 
positions than of instincts. There are no instincts per se. The 
word should be employed in a descriptive sense rather than as 
denoting an entity. The use of the word in this qualifying sense 
has the advantage that certain behavior may be described as 
instinctive, in a primary and direct or in a secondary and indirect 
sense, whereas the use of the word " instinct" would involve a 
restriction to a limited type of activity. 

It is surely more scientific to use the terminology in this sense 
than to try to make a catalogue of instincts, especially when a 
comparative study of the lists prepared reveals the fact that 
scarcely any two of them correspond. There can be no doubt 
that much of the difference is due to the fact that there has been 
no uniform sense in which the word has been employed. When 
writers like Thomas 3 and Ames 4 refer to hunger and sex as two 
primal instincts, they are not using the word in its biological 
connotation, but with reference to the great life-interests, viz., 

x Op. tit., p. 81. 

3 C. S. Sherrington, Integrative Action of the Nervous System, p. 390. 

3 W. I. Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 97-99, 1 18-19. 

4 E. S. Ames, op. cit., p. 34. 



50 TEE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

the struggle for food and rivalry for mates in the interests of 
reproduction. Doubtless it was out of the needs created by these 
interests that much instinctive behavior has resulted. The 
opposite tendency is shown in William James, who held that the 
number of human instincts is much larger than the number of 
animal instincts. Thorndike has drawn up a list 1 of all that James 
would include under instinct, and the list covers three pages, 
including what Thorndike would break up into reflexes, instincts, 
and inborn capacities, as well as other types of behavior of a more 
complex character. 

Between these two examples there are lists that vary in length 
in accordance with the content which the author places in the word 
"instinct." Angell, e.g., includes fear, anger, shyness, curiosity, 
affection, sexual love, jealousy and envy, rivalry, sociability, 
sympathy, modesty (?), play, imitation, constructiveness, secre- 
tiveness, and acquisitiveness. 2 McDougall has seven primary 
instincts and four others which are more complex. The first list 
includes flight, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-abasement and 
self-assertion, and the parental instinct; the supplementary list 
includes the instincts of reproduction, gregariousness, acquisition, 
and construction. 3 Kirkpatrick prefers to group the instincts as 
the individualistic or self-preservative, the parental, the social, 
the adaptive, the regulative (under which he includes the moral 
and the religious tendencies), and resultant or miscellaneous 
instincts. 4 Marshall makes a threefold classification of the indi- 
vidualistic instincts, those relating to the persistence of the species 
to which the individual belongs, and those relating to the persistence 
of social groups. 5 He also refers to a group of regulative instincts. 

Such a wide variety in the treatment of the subject is evidence 
of the complexity of ideas about the subject under treatment. 
There is a further difficulty in the fact that scholars have not 
always been faithful to their own definitions. Parmelee has 
criticized Angell's list, e.g., from the point of view of the author's 

1 E. L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man, pp. 17-20. 
2 Angell, op. cit., p. 349. 3 McDougall, op. cit., chap. iii. 

4 Edwin A. Kirkpatrick, Fundamentals of Child Study, pp. 51-63. 
s H. R. Marshall, Instinct and Reason, pp. 103-59. 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 51 

own definition that instincts " represent structurally preformed 
pathways in the nervous system, and stand functionally for effective 
inherited co-ordinations made in response to environmental de- 
mands. " r In the light of this definition Parmelee ♦asserts that 
"it is strange that he should include as instincts such general 
tendencies as imitation and play, which do not represent any 
specific pathways or co-ordinations in the nervous system, but 
which manifest themselves through many reflexes and combinations 
of reflexes. " 2 A grouping of the instincts, such as in the classifica- 
tion of Kirkpatrick, has its advantages, and the interest of this 
author is, of course, pedagogical. Marshall's analysis is in the 
interest of proving the presence of a specific religious instinct, a 
matter for later consideration. 

Let us observe again that the definition underlying the dis- 
cussion is largely determinative of what the scholar will include in 
his list of instincts. Lloyd Morgan's suggestions for a scientific 
approach seem to me to be entirely justifiable. He says : 

I suggest that, for the biologist and the psychologist, a criterion — not the 
only criterion, but a criterion of instinctive behavior — is that it is serviceable 
on the first occasion. But the biologist for the purposes of his interpretation 
of animal life will ask: Serviceable to what end? First of all, serviceable as 
affording the congenital foundations for an improved superstructure of behavior. 
That is one one way in which instinctive behavior is serviceable — the way 
which is of special interest to the psychologist. From the more distinctly 
biological point of view, instinctive behavior is broadly and generally serviceable 
for survival to which sundry bodily activities contribute. In further detail, 
instinctive behavior is serviceable for avoiding danger, by shrinking, quiescence 
or flight; serviceable for warding off the attacks of enemies; serviceable for 
obtaining food, capturing prey and so forth; serviceable for winning and 
securing a mate, for protecting and rearing offspring; in social animals, service- 
able for co-operating with others, and so behaving that not only the individual 
but the social group shall survive. But it will be said, these are the very ends 
for the attainment of which intelligence is serviceable. Unquestionably it is 
so. It is just because the many and varied modes of instinctive behavior 
are serviceable for the attainment of the same ends for which intelligence is 
serviceable, that their consideration is essential to the right history of ex- 
perience. Instinctive behavior, which has its roots in organic evolution, 
affords the rude outline sketch of that far less imperfect and far more fully 
serviceable behavior, the finishing touches of which are supplied by practice 

1 Angell, op. tit., p. 339. 2 Parmelee, op. tit., pp. 243, 244. 



52 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

under the guidance of intelligence. The net result (what is for popular speech 
the perfected instinct) is a joint product of instinct and intelligence, in which 
the co-operating factors are inseparable, but none the less genetically dis- 
tinguishable. 1 

From the biological point of view, then, we may speak of an 
instinct as a congenital co-ordination of reflexes, neurally integrated 
and effecting an organic response characteristic of and serviceable to 
the species and in some manner 2 capable of subsequent modification. 
The character of the response depends on the character of the 
stimulus and the presence or absence of any obstruction to its 
normal expression. 

As we move into the field of psychology, we must proceed to 
the tasks set before us in that field with the realization that we are 
dependent on the biologist for the scientific understanding of 
instinctive tendencies and behavior. In the matter of instinct we 
may say that the psychological task is interpretative rather than 
definitive. Functional psychology is behavioristic and is not con- 
cerned with "states of consciousness, " as were the associationalists, 
but with behavior, with what is done. The act is the starting-place, 
and action is determined by instinctive behavior directed to the 
satisfaction of some felt need. Sometimes one instinctive tendency 
functions in inhibition of another; sometimes they reinforce one 
another. Social psychology has helped us to an understanding of 
the rise of consciousness as due to the necessity of a selective process 
which will choose the impulse to be set free and the forms which 
it will utilize for the satisfaction of the need. In that way expe- 
rience has its genesis in instinctive behavior, which is regarded 
as including all the primal and congenital types of behavior which 
in any manner are synthesized in experience. And here we are in 
the field of intelligent behavior, the physiological correlate of 
which is to be seen in neural processes which involve the cerebral 
cortex. 

1 Morgan, Instinct and Experience, pp. 25, 26. 

2 The biological debate as to the manner in which modifications take place in 
the evolutionary process does not necessarily affect our problem. Darwinianism, 
Lamarkianism, the mutation theory of de Vries, and the germ-plasm theory of 
Weissmann are all attempts to account for the unanimously recognized phenomena 
of modification and variation. 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 53 

We need to remind ourselves, however, that there is another 
type of activity which is so characteristic of the species or race that 
we may deem it to be innate, and which nevertheless is too complex 
to be classified as instinctive. Some psychologists, as we have 
seen, make their treatment of instinct so broad that all these 
innate tendencies, such as the tendencies to imitate, to sympathize, 
to play, to respond to suggestions, to experience emotions, are 
included under instincts. Thorndike and others have done 
valuable work in pointing out the necessity of a differentiation. 
For certain psychological purposes, such as the task before us, 
these innate tendencies afford data which may be treated on the 
same plane with instinctive behavior, because instinctive tenden- 
cies are also innate. I need only refer to the fourth chapter of 
McDougall's Social Psychology for a valuable treatment of this 
subject. It would be difficult to give a physiological account of all 
innate tendencies. Each would require individual treatment. More- 
over, the behavior lacks that definiteness which characterizes the 
instinctive. "The tendency is to an extremely indefinite response 
or set of responses to a very complex situation," 1 and the final 
form in which the tendency expresses itself is more largely deter- 
mined by experience and intelligence. Innate tendencies corre- 
spond to instinctive behavior in being congenital responses, but 
differ in that they depend upon having connections in the cortical 
regions. 

Another problem which commands attention is that which 
concerns the instinctive basis of the emotions and sentiments. 
There are some instinctive reactions which occur so quickly in 
response to their stimuli that they are almost entirely reflex, and 
emotional quality is almost entirely lacking. On the other hand, 
there may be some cases where the instinctive reaction and its 
emotional correlate seem to be simultaneous. In the majority of 
cases the action precedes the emotion, as has been indicated in the 
James-Lange theory. The instinctive response is accompanied 
by a characteristic quality of emotional tone. Now this emotional 
experience has its neurosis corresponding to the neurosis of the 
instinctive experience. It has already been indicated that under 

I Thomdike, op. cit., p. 5. 



54 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

the proper environmental stimuli there issue from the subcortical 
region of the brain characteristic types of instinctive behavior 
which include muscular and glandular reactions. It is to be 
observed further that some of the motor responses are themselves 
described as emotional expressions. But in addition there take 
place certain visceral disturbances, such as alterations in the 
heart-beat, in the respiratory rhythm, and in the digestive and 
glandular functions, changes which influence the general coen- 
esthesia; and these disturbances also are efferent reactions to 
the stimuli in the same sense as the motor reactions. The physical 
changes resultant from these two types of instinctive reaction 
give rise to afferent impulses which come into the central nervous 
system with the result that the experience of the situation is 
qualified as the impulse reaches the cerebral cortex. And this 
qualification is what gives the instinctive experience its emotional 
tone. Lloyd Morgan says: "I regard it as probable that, in its 
primary genesis, the emotional tone is in large measure correlated 
with cortical disturbances due to stimulation which is visceral 
and coenesthetic in origin. " z After the emotional tone has been 
experienced and has been integrated, the subject is able to recall 
the affective meaning without going through the whole neurosis 
as first experienced. Instinctive tendencies may receive a reinforce- 
ment or an obstruction by the emotion which is called forth, and 
this gives rise to the regulative processes which characterize 
morality and religion. The position which Mr. Shand takes is 
practically the same as that of Professor Lloyd Morgan. He 
explains 2 the organic sensations which characterize the intense 
emotions by the alteration of the function of different organs, 
causing either a depression or a stimulation of the normal functions. 
He points out further 3 that the primary emotions have the ability 
to organize into their system all instincts that are serviceable to 
their ends, and are not confined each to one characteristic instinct. 
In complexity the sentiments mark a stage more advanced 
than the emotions. They may be defined as a synthesis of emotional 

1 Morgan, Instinct and Experience, p. 113. 

2 A. F. Shand, The Foundations of Character, pp. 193, 194. 

3 Ibid., p. 192. 



A SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF INSTINCT 55 

qualities which are organized about the ideas concerning objects, 
relationships, or values. A sentiment is capable of much greater 
complexity than an instinct or an emotion, as we may see in the 
moral, aesthetic, and religious sentiments. Yet its genesis is 
plainly traceable to the combination of emotions, the physiological 
connections of which with instinctive reactions have been shown. 
References may be made to the works of McDougall, 1 Shand, 2 
and Ribot 3 for psychological discussions of the origin and func- 
tions of the sentiments. The significance for our task consists in 
the instinctive origin of the sentiments, and in the evolution of the 
religious and scientific attitudes which are characterized by the 
presence of certain specific sentiments. 

1 McDougall, Social Psychology. 

2 Shand, The Foundations of Character. 

3 Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions. 



CHAPTER V 

THE THEORY OF SPECIFIC RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC 

INSTINCTS 

Having secured a working definition of instinct, the next part 
of the task is to endeavor to discover the bearing of that upon the 
problem of the relation of religion and science, especially in respect 
to their genesis in the instinctive life. The fifth chapter proposes 
to examine the hypotheses put forth by various writers that there 
are specific religious and scientific instincts, on the basis, of course, 
of the definition proposed in the previous chapter. 

The next part of our task is to inquire into the instinctive origin 
of religion and science in the light of what biology has taught us 
as to the nature of the instincts, innate tendencies, emotions, and 
sentiments. The purpose of the discussion concerning the nature 
of instinct was to attain that clarity that is necessary to avoid the 
danger which Mr. McDougall so rightly deprecates, viz., of using 
the words " instinct " and "instinctive" in such a loose sense as 
almost to spoil them for scientific purposes. 1 Alongside of that 
danger is the other, which we have already noted, of using the 
terms without a proper conception of their significance in biological 
thought. 

Some scholars, having first concluded that religion and science 
were of instinctive origin in the race, have jumped to the inference 
that there must be correspondingly specific instincts. The question 
has been discussed by those interested in accounting for the origin 
of religion more frequently than in regard to the beginnings of 
science. The Deists, who appeared in England in the seventeenth 
and the first half of the eighteenth centuries, in their efforts to 
establish the certainty and sufficiency of natural religion as against 
revelatory religion, declared religion to be a human instinct. 2 

1 McDougall, op. tit., p. 21. 

2 Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) taught that there were certain mental 
faculties, of which the fundamental group were the natural instincts which are innate 
and of divine origin. 

56 



THEORY OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INSTINCTS 57 

Reimarus, the German rationalist who was contemporaneous with 
the Deists, upheld the same position in the Wolfenbuttel Fragments. 
Religion he declared to be an instinct, therefore requiring no revela- 
tion. Boutroux, in stating the position of Auguste Comte, repre- 
sents him as holding that "the heart possesses an instinct, called 
the religious instinct, in virtue of which the individual is able to 
live with the dead, and to assimilate their excellences." 1 

So eminent a scientist as Romanes wrote of "the religious 
instincts of the human race," with the comment: 

Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an 
instinct pointing aimlessly, and therefore the fact of man being, as it is said, 
"a religious animal" — i.e., presenting a class of feelings of a peculiar nature 
directed to particular ends, and most akin to, if not identical with, true instinct 
— is so far, in my opinion, a legitimate argument in favor of the reality of 
some object toward which the religious side of this animal's nature is directed. 2 

The position of Max Muller, one of the great pioneers in the 
field of the history of religions, is in intent the same as that of the 
writers who posit a definite religious instinct, although he uses 
the word "faculty" in lieu of the word "instinct." He states his 
conviction that "as there is a faculty of speech, independent of all 
the historical forms of language, there is a faculty of faith in man, 
independent of all historical religions." Muller explains the func- 
tion of this faculty of religion as enabling man " to apprehend the 
Infinite under different names , and under varying disguises . ' ' Under 
the historical expressions of religion he thinks that he detects "a 
groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to 
utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God." 3 
Although the author uses the word "faculty," it will be seen that 
he uses it in the same sense as he does when referring to the power 
of speech, which of course can only be conceived with a biological 
reference. Professor Tiele, who follows Max Muller in his inter- 
pretation of the origin of religion, has interpreted him as I have 
done. Tiele, of course, interprets "the Infinite" in the Hegelian 

x Emile Boutroux, Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophies (English 
translation by J. Nield), p. 66. 

2 Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, essay on "The Influence of Science on Religion," 
p. 86. 

3 F. Max Muller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 13, 14. 



58 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

fashion as being within rather than without. So for him "the 
origin of religion consists in the fact that man has the Infinite within 
him, even before he himself is conscious of it, and whether he 
recognizes it or not." He then proceeds to say that "Whatever 
name we give it — instinct, or an innate, original, and unconscious 
form of thought, or form of conception — it is the specifically human 
element in man, the idea which dominates him." 1 

Jastrow is another author who gives expression to this theory. 
"The origin of religion," according to him, "so far as historical 
study can solve the problem, is to be sought in the bringing into 
play of man's power to obtain a perception of the Infinite through 
the impression which the multitudinous phenomena of the universe 

as a whole makes upon him He contemplates with a certain 

awe both himself and the world outside of himself, and the religious 
instinct thus stirred up leads him to realize his insignificance," etc. 
Thus by this writer the "perception of the Infinite" is used syn- 
onymously for "the religious instinct." Indeed, in one passage he 
expressly states that "the faint perception of the Infinite .... 
strikes a responsive chord in what, for want of a better name, we 
may call man's religious instinct." 2 The point of view which finds 
expression in Brinton seems to be similar. He suggests a "uni- 
versal postulate" which is the "psychic origin of all religious 
thought," and "a religiosity in man as a part of his psychic being," 
which is surely not far removed from the theory of a religious 
instinct. 3 

The outstanding example of an elaborate argument to estab- 
lish the theory of a religious instinct is the attempt of Marshall. 4 
Marshall's argument is as follows: (i) The universality of religious 
expression argues for its instinctiveness. Given the appropriate 
stimulus, the instinctive response is assured. (2) It is developed 
in man in whom ethical impulses and other social instincts are well 
developed. (3) Religious expressions are spontaneously developed. 
(4) Activities involved in religious expression have some biological 

1 C. P. Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion, II, 230-31. 

2 Morris Jastrow, The Study of Religion, pp. 196-98. 

3 D. G. Brinton, Religions of Primitive People, p. 47. 
* H. R. Marshall, Instinct and Reason, chap. ix. 



THEORY OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INSTINCTS 59 

function, some import to the race. (5) The rise of religious activ- 
ities is anterior to the speculative, intellectual life. He then pro- 
ceeds to the assumption of the existence of a religious instinct which 
expresses itself in ascetic practices, fasting, prayer, sacrifice, making 
of pilgrimages, etc. He sums up his thesis in the statement: 
" Religious activities are the expression of a true instinct; and the 
religious instinct must be looked on as our highest instinct because 
its function is regulative of reason, tending to bring about sub- 
ordination of variation to the typical reactions lower than those 
expressive of the religious instinct itself, in case variation becomes 
over-influential." 1 

Renan is another writer who upheld the theory in question. He 
said that religion was as instinctive in man as the nest-building 
instinct in the birds. 2 

Starbuck, in his well-known book on The Psychology of Religion, 
in one of the opening paragraphs makes the statement that "religion 
is a life, a deep-rooted instinct/' 3 which expresses itself as certainly 
as hunger and the desire for exercise. But we shall find this 
author taking a position in the latter part of the book which is not 
quite the same as this. 

One of the most recent expressions of this hypothesis is to be 
found in these words from the pen of Professor W. E. Hocking: 
"Religion is to be understood as a product and manifesto of human 

desire Religion is a reaction to 'our finite situation/ a 

natural reflex of small and highly aspiring beings in a huge — per- 
haps infinite — arena. This reaction seems to be, at its heart, as 
instinctive as a start or a shudder." 4 In other passages also he 
makes reference to "the religious instinct." 5 The external expres- 
sions of religion, such as prayer and worship, are also spoken of as 
instinctive. 6 

1 Marshall, op. cit., p. 528. 

2 E. Renan, Studies of Religious History, pp. xxiv and 153. He also uses the 
expression, "the eternal instinct which induces man to adopt a religious belief." 
Cf. Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, p. 307. 

3 E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, p. 7. 

4 W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 49-50. 
s Ibid., pp. 43, 151, 474. 6 Ibid., pp. 341, 342, 358. 



60 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

There are some authors who have postulated a religious instinct 
who would not do the same for science because they take the 
ground that the differentiation between religion and science consists 
in the fact that religion is instinctive, while science involves intel- 
lection. The position that instinct and intelligence produce two 
sorts of knowledge which may be kept apart is an epistemological 
position dependent upon a faculty psychology. Biology, in proving 
the unity of the neural processes, has given psychology a unifying 
conception of the mental processes which is functional, thus retiring 
the epistemology which would assign religious knowledge and 
scientific knowledge to separate faculties. Even if we grant that 
the scientific attitude has in it more of the cognitive element than 
the religious attitude, we are still able to find the instinctive genesis 
of cognition. 

There are a few writers who have referred to a scientific instinct. 
It may be that it is due to a loose manner of writing, but we are 
justified in criticizing their use of the term, whatever may have 
been the motivation. In this way we find Starbuck speaking of a 
psychical instinct and an intellectual instinct. 1 So also in Professor 
Hocking's book there appears this curious combination of words: 
"It is not our religious instinct alone, but something much like an 
acquired scientific instinct which sends us looking today among the 
feeling-roots of religion for its essence. Into the building of that 
scientific instinct have entered many strands.'' 2 

The statements which express or infer the existence in man of 
specific religious and scientific instincts are at variance with a 
scientific understanding of all three terms, science, religion, and 
instinct. It has been shown that the differentiation between religion 
and science is to be made psychologically in the realm of attitudes. 
From the psychological point of view, attitudes are much higher up 
the scale than instincts. We may state it somewhat as follows: 
The conflict which takes place between the instinctive and innate 
tendencies, or between the means available for the satisfaction of 
those instinctive and innate tendencies, results in the emergence of 

1 Starbuck, op. tit., p. 339, the impulse to know is called a "psychical instinct"; 
p. 270, the author speaks of the "intellectual instinct." 
3 W. E. Hocking, op. cit., p. 42. 



THEORY OF RELIGIOUS AND SCIENTIFIC INSTINCTS 61 

a desire toward the realization of an end of which man is conscious. 
In the next stage we meet with a conflict of these desires which 
induces a further operation of the selective process. Certain desires 
are emphasized and cultivated; others are obstructed and inhibited. 
This means that attitudes and habits are formed. And here we 
arrive at the field in which we have located the differentiation of 
the two disciplines. In their present manner of functioning, both 
religion and science belong to a more complex sphere of life than 
that characterized by simple instinctive behavior. The attitudes 
have evolved from a complex of desires which go back to a further 
complexity in which various instincts interact. 

For criticisms of the theory of a specific religious instinct 
reference may be made to the works of Irving King 1 and Coe. 2 The 
criticism of Coe is especially of interest and value as coming from 
one who, in one of his earlier publications, spoke very decidedly of 
the religious instinct and the intellectual instinct. 3 But in the 
later book he has completely abandoned that hypothesis. It is 
evident from the phenomena of religion that there is no specific 
set of stimuli which incites a religious reaction, and, further, that 
there is no typical reaction which may be called religious. And 
the criticisms apply with equal cogency to the notion of a scientific 
instinct. 

From the point of view of our working definition of instinct, 
the refutation of the hypothesis of a specific religious instinct or a 
scientific instinct should be quite feasible. The religious and the 
scientific attitudes may be compared to instincts in that they are 
characteristic of and serviceable to the species and capable of sub- 
sequent modifications. But these attitudes are both characterized 
by an element of intelligence, and religion especially by an emo- 
tional tone, neither of which belong to behavior, which finds its 
physiological correlate in neural processes involving only the sub- 
cortical regions. If religion be put in the same class as "a start 
or a shudder," as we noted Professor Hocking placed it, then it is 

1 Irving King, The Development of Religion, pp. 25 ff. 

2 G. A. Coe, The Psychology of Religion, p. 323. 

3 G. A. Coe, The Religion of a Mature Mind, pp. 52, 58, 247. 



62 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

a type of reaction which involves the afferent and efferent nerves 
and the spinal cord and does not require the brain at all. 

If the conclusions of the biologists are correct, as their experi- 
ments seem to show, then a decerebrate animal is capable of all 
known instinctive reactions. That being the case, there seems no 
good reason why the person who is defective in cerebral matter, 
according to the theory of a religious instinct, should not be capable 
of being religious in the same way as a person of normal capacities. 
But the truth is that there is no combination of reflexes which have 
been integrated by the nervous system in such a way that it effects 
an instinctive reaction that can be designated as specifically 
religious. Neither is it possible to find a specifically scientific 
instinct as a result of a neural integration of a certain group of 
reflexes. 

The assumption of Marshall and others who hold to a religious 
instinct is tied up with the idea that there is an element of con- 
sciousness in all instinctive behavior. But our biological observa- 
tions have precluded an acceptance of that theory. Consciousness 
is present when the activity includes cerebral cortical processes, 
while instinctive behavior in its primal form is subcortical. The 
religious attitude involves an element of consciousness, and it is 
difficult to understand how any scholar can reduce it to the sim- 
plicity of "a natural reflex .... as instinctive as a start or a 
shudder," as we have observed to be the position of Professor 
Hocking. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EFFORT TO IDENTIFY RELIGION AND SCIENCE 
WITH CERTAIN SPECIFIC INSTINCTS 

The last chapter was engaged with a discussion of the hypoth- 
esis of specific instincts for the religious and scientific reactions. 
This chapter is intended to serve as criticism of the theories which 
endeavor to account for the rise of religion and science by reference 
to specific instincts with which they are identified. 

A further approach toward the solution of the genetic problem 
is in the direction of identifying one or both of the religious and 
scientific disciplines with specific instincts. This is not the same 
position as that of those who posit religious and scientific instincts, 
though it has this in common with that hypothesis that it resolves 
both of them to a single root. 

Campanella Tommaso, the Italian philosopher who was a 
contemporary of Giordano Bruno, 1 568-1639, declared religion to 
be an inherent part of existence, and identified it in its lowest 
form with the instinct of self-preservation. 1 A somewhat similar 
position is taken by Auguste Sabatier, who speaks of faith as "the 
higher form" of the instinct of conservation, and of man as "in- 
curably religious, " and again of the religious need as a manifesta- 
tion of the " instinct of every being to persevere in being." 2 

Reference has already been made to the position of Professor 
Hocking in positing a religious instinct which is compared to 
behavior as instinctive as starts and shudders. In other passages 
the author virtually identifies this religious instinct with the 
instinct of self-preservation. He quotes from Lippert's Kultur- 
geschichte, chapter i, where that author derives religion from the 
fundamental need of "Lebensfursorge," and says that this deep-set 
desire which we call religious may "be represented as an ultimate 

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica (nth ed.), V, 121, 122, article "Campanella, Tom- 
maso." 

2 Auguste Sabatier, op. tit., pp. 3, 9, 21. 

63 



64 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

demand for conscious self-preservation. " x Again he describes the 
religious passion as seeking to secure satisfaction for the " instinct 
of self-preservation. " 2 Further he refers to this instinct as prompt- 
ing the search for the Absolute. 3 And yet again worship is deline- 
ated as "a spontaneous impulse for spiritual self-preservation." 4 

The history of biological evolution leads to the conclusion that 
instinctive action is characterized by the ability to be serviceable 
on the first occasion to the organism or to the species. Darwin 
would have explained it on the theory of natural selection in the 
struggle for existence. Some would deny the existence of a specific 
instinct of self-preservation, and use the term for a group of in- 
stincts, as, e.g. , Kirkpatrick. 5 Others would take the ground that the 
preservation of the self and of the species is the end of all instinctive 
behavior. Those who admit of a specific instinct of self-preservation 
usually connect it with physiological processes such as are de- 
signed to maintain nutrition, expel poison, and ward off danger. 
Ribot points out that this instinct on its offensive side gives rise to 
the emotion of anger, and on its defensive side to the emotion of 
fear. 6 Doubtless the desire for self-preservation is one of the 
contributory causes, but it would require an unwarranted breadth 
to the definition of the instinct of self-preservation to justify an 
identification of religion with it. 

Another theory which has been advanced is that which finds 
the source of religion in the sexual instinct. Students of the 
sociology of religion find that there is a kinship between the reli- 
gious and the sexual life. As we shall see, there are many points 
of contact as, e.g., in the adolescent experiences and the initiation 
ceremonies which were so often observed at that period. As 
Starbuck points out with reference to the attainment of puberty: 
"The physiological birth brings with it the dawning of all those 
spiritual accompaniments which are necessary to the fullest social 

activities This is the time biologically when one enters 

into deep relation with social life." 7 So marked is the kinship 

1 Hocking, op. tit., p. 49. 2 Ibid., p. 106. 

3 Ibid., pp. 202, 203. 4 Ibid., p. 366. 

5 Kirkpatrick, Fundamentals of Child Study. See his classification of the instincts. 

6 Ribot, op. tit., pp. 207, 218. 7 Starbuck, op. tit., p. 401. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE AND SPECIFIC INSTINCTS 65 

that it has led the author to conclude that "in a certain sense the 
religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct." 1 He 
makes it clear, however, that the sexual instinct is to be considered 
rather as a condition of growth than as a cause. "The sexual life, 
although it has left its impress on fully developed religion, seems 
to have originally given the psychic impulse which called out the 
latent possibilities of development, rather than to have furnished 

the raw material out of which religion was constructed 

Although the reproductive instinct may be primal, it seems to have 
been entirely superseded as a distinct factor in religious growth 
by other elements." 2 In another passage Professor Starbuck 
makes reference to two works — Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, 
p. 295, and Burnham, A Study of Adolescence, Pedagogical Semi- 
nary, I, 181, which base the phenomena of the religious life largely 
on the sexual. 3 

The view to which Professor Starbuck has given expression is 
quoted by Professor Ames, and with a more precise definition 
he approves of it. He points out the importance of recognizing 
that it is the social character of the sexual life that is important 
for religion, and in that sense may be regarded as "an irradiation 
of the reproductive instinct." 4 Bearing in mind that Professor 
Ames makes the food-seeking and reproductive instincts basal to 
all, we can appreciate the reason that he traces the genesis of the 
social life to the sexual instinct, as against the position of many 
other psychologists who affirm that there is a specific instinct 
of gregariousness. In his definition he identifies it with the highest 
social values. s Consequently he is entirely consistent in tracing 
the genesis of religion to the sexual instinct. 

Professor Thomas seems to take a somewhat similar position. 
He is quite explicit in defining the food and sex instincts as elemen- 
tal. 6 And again he bases the social fife on the sexual. 7 He does 

1 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 207. 

3 Ibid., p. 402. 4 Ames, op. cit., pp. 221, 222. 

5 Ibid., p. 168: "The religious consciousness is identified with the consciousness 
of the greatest values of life. " 

6 W. I. Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 97-99. 

7 Ibid., p. 107. 



66 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

not make any extended reference to the matter of religion, but he 
makes this statement: "The appeal made during a religious re- 
vival to an unconverted person has psychologically some resem- 
blance to the appeal of the male to overcome the hesitancy of the 
female .... in both cases the appeal is an intimate, sympathetic, 
and pleading kind. " x 

The connection between religion and the sexual life is one 
which can be readily demonstrated, and we shall endeavor to show 
that in the genesis of religion an important role may be assigned 
to the behavior which was originated by the reactions connected 
with the sexual life. However, our biological considerations 
preclude us from an acceptance of the theory. The instinctive 
reactions are of such a nature that it would be difficult to make a 
list that would be agreeable to everybody. Even though we may 
be prepared to admit that the elemental interests of life are the 
struggle for food and the rivalry for mates, those interests cannot 
be shown to be the only specific groups of reflexes which have been 
integrated by the nervous system. There are other reactions 
which can be shown to be instinctive, yet which serve these elemen- 
tal interests only in an indirect way. The cortical regions are 
marked by the tendency to make use of the data which are secured 
by the automatic responses which center in the subcortical regions. 
In this way behavior that at first is entirely automatic may be 
made to serve specific ends. But in their primal forms these 
instinctive reactions cover a wide range of activity in which there 
is action and interaction, marked by variety and complication. 
These tendencies include, to be sure, behavior that is serviceable 
in the obtaining of food and in mating and procreating. But they 
include also behavior that serves the purposes of self-protection 
either by flight or pugnacity, of associational life in flocks, herds, 
and social groups, and of prying into that which is strange, etc. 
The length of one's list depends upon whether the dominating 
interest is to analyze or to classify. 

Another example of an unscientific use of the word "instinct" 
in applying it to the genesis of religion and science is to be found 
in Hardy, The Religious Instinct. The title would seem to suggest 

1 W. I. Thomas, Sex and Society, p. 115. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE AND SPECIFIC INSTINCTS 67 

that there is a specific religious instinct; but not so the argument. 
He states his theory on pp. 41 ff., that 

what we call the instinct of approach — of which propitiation is one expression- 
must be accepted as the source of the whole active religious phenomena of 
the race. Here we have something as fundamental as the instincts of causation 
and self-preservation. If the former of these — that of causation — has proved 
the basis of all intellectual advance, and the latter — the instinct of self- 
preservation — the mainspring of all man's social organization, why should not 
the instinct, so universal, so ineradicable, as this of "approach" prove as valid 
in its direction as its kindred instincts have done in theirs ? 

It is apparent that in the sense in which the author uses the word 
" instinct" he is thinking of something involving conscious ex- 
perience, much more complex than behavior, which may technically 
be called instinctive. 

There is a similar tendency, though of perhaps less frequent 
appearance, to identify science with a specific instinct. May it 
not be that there are fewer tendencies to speculate about the 
genesis of science than about the genesis of religion because the 
scientist is more interested in functions than he is in origins? 
The scientific method has long been in vogue in science itself. But 
the subjective nature of the material and the a priori conceptions 
of its divine origin have prevented a thoroughly objective treatment 
of religion. We are only beginning to apply the scientific method 
to religion, and thus to get a science of religion. Science has 
become completely emancipated from the view that the validity 
of her knowledge is determined by reference to its source. 

Shand traces the genesis of science to the instinct of curiosity. 
The definition of curiosity as an instinct is in the sense that its 
end is innately determined, and not in the sense that its " behavior 
which is instrumental to this end is also innately determined. " 
The behavior which is the correlate of curiosity is distinguished, 
not by a special set of movements, "but by the way in which 
they are combined." 1 He admits, however, that in some of the 
simpler and earlier forms the movements are quite instinctive. 2 
Curiosity having been shown to be instinctive, the author follows 
McDougall in making wonder the primary emotion which accom- 
panies it. 3 Then he proceeds to show that wonder reacts in two 

1 Shand, op. tit., p. 439. 3 Ibid., p. 440. 3 Ibid., p. 442. 



68 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

diverse ways. In the one case it becomes the source of the love of 
knowledge, basic to science and philosophy. In the other it gives 
rise to the love of mystery, an element in religion. Wonder, he 
says, "is the force and principle of the mind which leads us to 
pursue truth for itself as an end. .... In wonder curiosity is 
freed from alien control, and pursues knowledge as an end. " x 

Ribot also, in his account of the genesis of "the intellectual 
sentiment," says: "This feeling, like all the others, depends on an 

instinct, a tendency, a craving This primitive craving — 

the craving for knowledge — under its instinctive form is called 
curiosity." In the evolution of this sentiment, the writer dis- 
tinguishes three stages, the first being the utilitarian and practical, 
the second disinterested and scientific, and in the third it becomes 
a passion. 2 Whatever we may think of his third stage, we must 
admit that he is correct in finding the genesis of the scientific 
attitude in the practical. 

There is a tendency in some quarters to find the origin of science 
connected with the behavior resulting from the instinct to obtain 
food. Professor Ames, e.g., makes reference to "science exemplify- 
ing the insight and mastery worked out in connection with the 
food process." 3 Professor Thomas finds that the "strain on the 
attention in the food and conflict side of life involves the develop- 
ment of mental impressionability, particularly of an impression- 
ability on the side of cognition." 4 

The same arguments which prevented the acceptance of the 
theories which proposed a single root for the origin of the religious 
attitude apply in the case of the genesis of the scientific attitude. 
The complexity of life and the variety of instinctive responses lead 
to the conclusion that the root of science, as well as of religion, is 
analogous rather to the fibrous than to the taproot, is multiple 
rather than unitary. The statements of Shand and Ribot on the 
curiosity origin, and of Ames and Thomas on the food origin of 
the scientific attitude, are both true, and because they are both 
true, each of them expresses only a part of the matter. 

1 Shand, op. cit., pp. 449, 450. 3 Ames, op. cit., pp. 416, 417. 

2 Ribot, op. cit., pp. 368, 369. 4 Thomas, op. cit., pp. 118, 119. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MULTIPLE INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION 

AND SCIENCE 

It is the ambition of the present chapter to present and defend 
the thesis that the origin of both the religious and scientific atti- 
tudes, while instinctive, is at the same time multiple. This is 
done by a reference to the differentiation proposed in the fourth 
chapter, and then by an attempt to show that such a differentiation 
may grow out of the instinctive behavior connected with any set 
of instincts. In this case illustrations are drawn from the instinc- 
tive reactions in connection with five of the leading types of stimuli. 

The great truth which lies behind the theories that we have 
noted is that the religious and scientific attitudes have their genesis 
in the innate and instinctive dispositions and behavior of the race. 
The thesis which I propose is that the origin of both religion and 
science, while instinctive, is multiple. We must bear in mind 
that there are no such things as religion and science, in the 
sense of species. Both are generic terms. There are religions 
and sciences. We may say of both what William James said of 
religion, viz., that they are " collective names like government." 1 
The various species of these two genera are so multiform 
that it has been difficult to get a definition of religion. Most 
definitions have been in terms of the species in which the author 
was especially interested. The common element in all religions, 
as Dr. Watson has pointed out, is "the social attitude toward 
the non-human environment," and the common element in the 
sciences is the "mechanical attitude toward the non-human 
environment." 2 

Therefore we are concerned with a variety of phenomena that 
are connected with the rise of these attitudes. The history of 
religions furnishes us with a heterogeneity of data, representing 

1 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 26. 

2 A. C. Watson, "The Logic of Religion," American Journal of Theology, XX, 98. 

69 



70 TEE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

interests as varied as life itself. Whatever may be one's theory of 
man's origination of an extra-human environment, it must be 
evident to the student of history that he has associated almost all 
of the interests of life at some time with that environment in his 
struggle for existence. So too the history of the sciences furnishes 
evidence of a progressive attempt to gain dominion by mechanical 
means over the forces by which he was environed. Man, in his 
achievement of religion and science, was not dealing with phe- 
nomena which he was able to differentiate under these two captions. 
They are both of them human products, arising in a human environ- 
ment by the effort of man as he attempted to gain control in the 
great struggle for existence. They represent variant attitudes 
toward the extra-human environment in accordance with whether 
that environment was conceived to be amenable to social relation- 
ships or to be wholly under mechanistic law. So that they involved, 
to a considerable extent, the same human interests, and arose as 
differentiable techniques in the struggles and conflicts of life which 
was characterized by a unified type of instinctive behavior. 

This thesis may be illustrated by reference to different types of 
instinctive behavior, and I shall attempt to illustrate it by a brief 
treatment of the instinctive reactions connected with (i) the obtain- 
ing of food, (2) mating and procreating, (3) self-preservation, 
(4) contact with the strange and unusual, and (5) gregariousness. 

I. THE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE 
SECURING OF FOOD 

The importance of the supply of food is apparent, for with that 
is tied up the existence of the individuals of the group. The 
necessity of food underlies the total economic life, and it is to the 
ordinary man the all-absorbing interest. In prehistoric times 
anthropologists conclude that primitive man inhabited the equa- 
torial regions where his wants were simple, and nature offered an 
ample supply to him of those things which were necessary to his 
existence. But as time passed there came about critical situations 
in this phase of the struggle for existence. We have observed that 
the reflective process was a product of a conflict of instincts or of 
conflicting ways of securing satisfaction for those instincts. When 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 71 

the natural supply of food failed, or became limited, and man had 
to go into unexplored regions to supply his needs, he faced crises 
which induced reflection. When a choice was presented to him, 
because of the luxuriance of the available supply, he was compelled 
to call into being a selective process, and so the conflict realm 
induced reflection. The latter situation was not one in which he 
needed to seek for any outside assistance, for it was simply a matter 
of gratifying his particular taste. But the former situation con- 
stituted a crisis and demanded action. It called for the creation 
of some technique to help him over such critical experiences. 

If we go into the accounts of the ways in which primitive peoples 
actually met such situations, we find a considerable degree of uni- 
formity in the techniques which they worked out. The first of 
the techniques to be mentioned is magic. Magic is an attempt 
to get satisfaction for a desired end by reference to some occult 
powers. It is an attempt at coercion, and is based upon the belief 
that if one knows the proper occult means the securing of the desired 
end is inevitable. Hence magical behavior is intended to coerce 
the occult powers to do the thing needed. It is not necessary for 
our purposes to go into an extended discussion of magic, the 
attempted classifications, etc. The point of importance for us to 
note is that it arose as a technique to help man over critical sit- 
uations, many of which arose in connection with the supply of 
food. How was a good crop of grain or fruit, or a good catch of 
fish, or a plentiful supply of rain to be secured ? Magic was one 
solution. The system was completely wired so that, if you knew 
how to turn on the switch, the circuit was complete and the result 
inevitable. 

The question that concerns us is the question as to the connec- 
tion of magic with religion and science. Magical practices arose 
in an age prior to the differentiation of the various attitudes. It 
was a pre-psychological period. We are not compelled to try to 
identify magic with one human attitude to the exclusion of the 
others. On the one hand, if the conception of religion as a social 
attitude toward the extra-human environment be correct, magic 
has elements that are decidedly religious. If the definition used 
the phrase superhuman instead of extra-human, magic would have 



72 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

to be excluded in the majority of cases. Magical practices were 
sometimes directed to the object directly; sometimes to a spirit 
or god, when it was tied to animism. The very recognition of 
an occult power which man is endeavoring to coerce implies a 
socializing tendency which is at least on the way to religion. 

On the other hand, magic is also prescientinc. It was man's 
endeavor to get over the critical situation by the use of a mechanical 
means. In many instances the social element was absent, espe- 
cially in private magical ceremonies and formulas, and indeed in 
many instances of public magic. If the performance of a ceremony 
or recitation of a formula was regarded as productive of the desired 
end, we have here primitive man's first conception of cause and 
result. It was by no means a regular and orderly form of the 
causal category, but it was a beginning, and in that sense it was a 
precursor of a scientific explanation. 

The use of magical practices for the securing of an abundant 
supply of food may be illustrated from scores of sources. We need 
only refer to the rain-making ceremonies which are practiced in 
Central Africa among the Agoni people, in India, in Russia, and 
in Australia. 1 Similarly the Indians of British Columbia resort to 
magical practices to insure the supply of salmon. 2 In Central 
Australia sympathetic magic is systematically used to insure the 
supply of the totem animal or plant, which is, in the majority of 
cases, the chief article of diet. 3 Frazer has some interesting 
accounts of ceremonial dances and other practices observed in 
certain parts of Europe — Transylvania, Baden, and Macedonia — 
to make the crops grow high. 4 

The connection between the food interest and religion is further 
observable in a multiplicity of ceremonials connected with various 
primitive peoples. With the evolution of a supermundane world, 
peopled with spirits, some benignant and some malignant, the 
human task was to relate one's self in such a way to that world as 

1 Cf. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Part I, Vol. I, pp. 249, 250, and D. G. 
Brinton, Religions of Primitive People, pp. 173, 174, for accounts of rain-making 
ceremonies. 

2 Frazer, op. ciL, p. 108. 

3 Ibid., p. 85. * Ibid., pp. 137-39. . 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 73 

to avoid the displeasure and to procure the aid of these spirits in 
securing the satisfaction for felt needs. Hence the cult arose as a 
technique for operating on the wills of such spirits so as to enlist 
their sympathy and procure their assistance. In their elemental 
forms the ceremonials connected with the cult were designed to 
secure satisfaction for those needs which grew out of instinctive 
behavior. Illustrations are available in abundance. Ceremonials 
connected with the mother-goddess associated her with the idea 
of fertility. Oases were the sacred spots to the Arabs. Sacrificial 
rites were connected with edible animals. The images and objects 
of worship are in numerous instances the characteristic food 
objects for the geographically defined region where the worship 
prevails. Totem objects are in the majority of cases the most 
staple food objects of the totem clans. Spencer and Gillen give 
a list of tribes in Central Australia with their respective food objects. 
The totem of the Ainus was a bear; of the Hopi Indians, maize; 
of the Arabs, the date palm; of certain Babylonian people on the 
Persian Gulf, the fish. 

Reference has been made to a suggestion by Professor Ames 
that science illustrates "the insight and mastery worked out in 
connection with the food process," 1 and to a similar position taken 
by Professor Thomas. There seems to me to be no doubt of the 
correctness of this theory. With the development of the observa- 
tional processes, man would note that certain fruits and certain 
grains came only at certain seasons, and that during the remainder 
of the year there was no supply. Fisher folk would observe that 
certain meteorological conditions were favorable and others un- 
favorable to a good catch. Hunting people would find climatic 
and other conditions affecting the supply of game. Thus a sense 
of regularity, of conditionally, and hence of causality, gradually 
evolved in connection with the food supply. The occurrence of 
critical situations, as the natural supply became insufficient and 
man had to evolve mental powers to help him over the crises, would 
only serve to make his observation keener as to conditionality 
and causality. With the progress of time this led to practical 
reactions in the evolution of primitive agriculture and horticulture 

1 The Psychology of Religious Experience, p. 416, note. 



74 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

as techniques by which man might gain control over the food 
supply. So that the reactions of the food instinct led in this way 
to the beginnings of a scientific attitude. 

II. INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS CONNECTED WITH MATING AND 

PROCREATING 

The other dominant life-interest is that of reproduction. If 
food is essential to the existence of individuals, mating and pro- 
creating are necessary to the preservation of the species. It was 
to be expected that man, in his desire to obtain control over the 
forces by which he was environed, should so organize his techniques 
as to obtain help in matters relative to these two primal life- 
interests. We have seen how that worked out in regard to the 
food interest. It may be shown in an analogous way that he used 
both the social and the mechanical processes in attaining control 
of the sexual interests. 

The argument has been presented for an understanding of 
magic which involves both the prereligious and the prescientific 
elements. The theory which was applied to magical practices in 
connection with the food process applies in precisely the same way 
in respect to magical practices connected with the reproductive 
process. Frazer has recounted various instances where the resort 
has been to sympathetic magic to secure the ends served by the 
procreative instinct. In Sumatra a make-believe child is used for 
a barren woman who desires children. In Greece, Bulgaria, and 
Bosnia there is a make-believe ceremony of restoring dead persons 
to life. There is also an Indian practice of shooting darts at a clay 
image in order to win the love of a woman. 1 

In some instances the magical practices involve both the food 
and the reproductive interests. It is a carrying over of the idea 
of fertility from the region of the sexual life to those activities 
connected with the food supply. "The Greeks and Romans sacri- 
ficed pregnant victims to the goddesses of corn and of the earth, 
doubtless in order that the earth might teem, and corn swell in 
the ear." 2 Analogously the magical value of pregnant women to 
communicate fertility was a widespread belief. Austrian and 

1 Frazer, op. ciL, pp. 70-77. a Ibid., p. 141. 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 75 

Bavarian peasants gave the first fruit to a pregnant woman to make 
the tree bear abundantly. Nicobar Islanders have pregnant women 
and their husbands, and Orinoco Indians have pregnant women, 
sow the seed to insure a good crop. In some tribes the blood shed 
at the circumcision and subincision of boys and also the foreskin 
are regarded as possessing fertilizing value, and so are buried in 
proximity to the crop which it is desired to cultivate. 1 In other 
cases circumcision is regarded as in the nature of a sacrifice to the 
goddess of fertility, securing the protection of the goddess for the 
child, and putting the child's reproductive powers at the command 
of the deity. 2 

In this connection reference may be made to " taboo," which 
has been rightly described as "negative magic." 3 Taboo has its 
origin in the social structure, and its origin is purely human. But 
in animism it came to be associated with the rights of gods and 
demons which were not to be infringed upon, without the trans- 
gressor endangering himself by the infringement. It has been 
associated w T ith food objects, with sexual functions, and with dead 
bodies. The uncleanness that rests with all sexual functions is 
most marked. Marriage, a woman in her courses, a man with an 
issue, and the birth of a child are all curiously tabooed. "This is 
because birth and everything connected with the propagation of 
the species .... seem to him to involve the action of superhuman 
agencies of a dangerous kind." 4 Thompson gives a number of 
instances of sexual taboo, as (a) menstruation taboos, (b) co- 
habitation taboos, (c) childbirth taboos, (d) girls of irregular 
menstruation supposed to be possessed of supernatural power, and 
(e) men fearful of interfering with the harem rights of gods and 
goddesses. 5 Here we have, as in positive magic, the social attitude 
toward powers considered to be extramundane, and also a primitive 
approximation toward a causal explanation of certain mysterious 
phenomena. 

1 Ibid., pp. 95 ff. 2 Barton, Semitic Origins, p. 100. 

3 Ames, op. cit., p. 88; N. W. Thomas, "Taboo," in Encyclopaedia Britannica 
(nth ed.), XXVI, 337 ff- 

4 Thompson, Semitic Magic, pp. 113, 114. 
slbid., pp. 131-33. 



76 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

The ceremonies connected with the attainment of puberty 
afford another example of the connection between sex and religion. 
The phenomena in connection with puberty were mysterious and 
seemed to involve the coming to birth of an ability to perform 
certain instinctive reactions hitherto impossible. It is the period 
when the boy or the girl sees the dawn of the adult life, and in- 
volves the birth of the youth's appreciation of his or her part in the 
group life. Consequently it has been a custom, widespread both 
chronologically and geographically, to mark the transition by 
certain sacred rites, almost invariably attended with an element 
of mystery. 1 

Another example of the connection between religion and sex is 
phallicism. Examples of phallic worship, or worship of the genera- 
tive power of nature as symbolized in the phallus, may be seen in 
the history of the religions of Greece, Phoenicia, Rome, Mexico, 
Peru, India, and Japan. 2 

Still another group of phenomena may be cited as illustrating 
the bond of connection between religion and sex. I refer to the 
conversion phenomena in connection with the Christian religion. 
Those who have made thorough investigations in this field have 
come to the conclusion that conversion is a distinctly adolescent 
phenomenon. From the biological standpoint we have noted that 
the adolescent period is the time when the procreative instincts 
are awakened. It is also a well-known fact that adolescence is the 
period of life in which the majority of conversions take place. The 
philosophy of the situation has been treated in the works of Star- 
buck, Stanley Hall, Coe, Ames, Leuba, and others, and need not 
concern us here. But the fundamental connection between the 
religious awakening and the birth of the sexual instinct seems to be 
proven by their synchronous appearance. 

It is interesting to note that man, in picturing to himself the 
world of the gods, has carried over the elements which were of 

1 Examples of ceremonials connected with puberty and initiation abound. Cf. 
Brinton, Religions of Primitive People, pp. 197-200; Jane Harrison, Ancient Art 
and Ritual, pp. 106-13; Frazer, The Golden Bough, copious references. 

2 See art. "Phallicism," in Encyclopaedia Britannica (nth ed.), XXI, 345, and art* 
"Phallism" in Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, IX, 815 fL, by Hartland- 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 77 

paramount interest in human life. Surely the gods must be like 
men, possessed of like interests and desires. In Assyrian mythology 
the goddess Ishtar is pictured as conducting amorous relationships 
with men. In Indian literature Krishna is portrayed as sporting 
with shepherd girls. The Mohammedan idea of heaven is a carry- 
ing over into the other world the degradation of womanhood in 
sensuous pictures. 

The association between activity connected with behavior 
induced by the sexual instinct and religion is established by an 
abundance of historical evidence. There is not so much data to 
show the connection between the beginnings of science and pro- 
creative activity. At the same time there is evidence that cannot 
be overlooked. From the point of view of magic and taboo the 
material is abundant to show the connection with the reproductive 
life. We have already observed that magic implies a mechanical 
technique for avoiding dangers and overcoming crises, so that in 
magical practices we have the prescientific view of man toward the 
sexual life. The progress of more exact conceptions broke down 
magical causality and paved the way for a scientific causality. 

Barton gives it as his opinion that among the Semites "the 
beginnings of intelligent life, the knowledge of clothing, agriculture, 
and the arts of civilization," 1 were attributed to the sexual relation. 
Thomas, as we have seen, attributes the development of mental im- 
pressionability to the strain on the attention in connection with food 
and reproduction. 2 From the sexual instinct arises a susceptibility 
to the opinions of others, resulting in the mental activity of 
comparison and selection. 

One of the best evidences for the theory proposed is the growth 
of the primitive conception of paternity. 3 Anthropologists find 
that in primitivity the birth of children was a mystery. In the 
beginning the father of the child did not understand that he had a 
part in the reproductive process, owing to ignorance concerning 
the nature of physiological processes. But as the understanding 

1 Barton, op. cit., pp. 101, 102. 

2 Thomas, Sex and Society, pp. 118, 119. 

3 A thorough elaboration may be consulted in the work of E. S. Hartland, Primitive 
Paternity, 2 vols., London, 1909. 



78 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

came, it meant the birth of a primitive conception of causality in 
respect to the procreative process. The first discovery of the part 
played by the father in the reproductive process led to the strange 
"couvade" ceremony among certain primitive peoples, an illus- 
tration of the crudity with which they formed their first mental 
tools. Nevertheless, it marks the beginning of the displacement 
of mythological knowledge by scientific knowledge in regard to the 
sexual processes and relationships. 

III. THE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH SELF- 
PRESERVATION 

Some psychologists would include self-preservation under the 
instinctive behavior connected with the obtaining of food. If they 
are to be considered together, I would prefer to include the food- 
getting instinct under self-preservation, because the latter is the 
more generic term and might be taken to include a larger scope. It 
is even possible to use the term " self-preservation " in a sense 
wide enough to include all instinctive behavior. But in this in- 
stance I propose to use it in a narrower connotation as applying 
to two types of reaction, the aim of which is to avoid dangers and 
to overcome opposition to the normal operation of the life-processes. 
These are flight or the defensive reaction with its accompanying 
emotional tone of fear, and pugnacity or the offensive reaction with 
its concomitant emotion of anger. These two types of behavior 
are the characteristic expressions of the instinctive tendency toward 
self-preservation. We might say that they are the organism's 
way of expressing the will to live in the face of circumstances ready 
to crush it. To be sure, we may include the instinctive disposition 
to procure food to satisfy the felt needs in this organic will 
to live. Indeed the instinctive behavior of self-preservation may 
be associated with many other circumstances of types of behavior. 
Circumstances connected with the securing of food, with mating, 
with procreation, with curiosity, and with gregariousness may be 
the stimuli calling forth flight or pugnacity, with their emotional 
tones of fear or anger. 

Starbuck sees in religion a response to the instinct of self- 
preservation and the desire for the fulness of life on the physiological 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 79 

plane. 1 Hocking, as we have seen, identified the two instincts. 2 
Herter finds in religion, as well as in music, painting, and litera- 
ture, a human product which represents "the fusion of self- 
preservation and the sexual instincts." 3 

There is no doubt that much of the ceremonial originated by 
primitive people was designed to help them in thus determining 
to persevere in fife, in the struggle for existence. That fact may be 
illustrated from almost any ceremonial. Moreover, the struggle 
for existence lies behind the evolution of both the religious and the 
scientific techniques. Socially and mechanically they are designed 
to help man satisfy the felt needs of life in the struggle against the 
opposing forces. Primitive man's ceremonial was indicative of a 
fear lest he should lose out in the struggle for existence. The 
ritual was an expression of the felt emotion, often by a mimetic 
representation of the desired result which enhanced the desired end 
or object. This factor in the process, whereby that which was 
felt would satisfy the need was mimetically enacted beforehand, 
illustrates the indistinguishable beginnings from which art and 
religion originate. Jane Harrison has presented the matter in 
Ancient Art and Ritual with typical illustrations. 4 Thus also 
many of the dramatic representations which enter into religious 
ceremonial are illustrative of the emotion of fear lest they should 
not pass the crisis in safety. Miss Harrison presents an account 
of a traveler in Euboea during Holy Week who was 

struck by the genuine grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter 
eve there was the same gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman 
why it was. She answered: "Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not 
rise tomorrow, we shall have no corn this year." The old woman's state of 
mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old emotion .... fear, imminent 
fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical Christ of 
Judaea, still less the incarnation of the Godhead, proceeding from the Father; 
he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus and laid by the priests, 
the leaders of that chorus, in the sepulchre. s 

1 Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, p. 403. 

2 Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 106. 

3 Herter, The Biological Aspect of Human Problems, p. 285. 

4 See pp. 24-27, where she refers to the prayer-disks of the Huichol Indians, which 
as prayers may be classified as ritual, and as decorated surfaces are specimens of 
primitive art. 

slbid., pp. 73, 74- 



80 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

Farther down in the scale of civilization the fear element is to 
be seen operative in many ways. It is tied up with animism in the 
majority of cases. So prevalent is this element of fear in the primi- 
tive forms of religion that many have seen in it the origin of religion. 
Lucretius said: "It is fear that engenders the gods." Thomas 
Hobbes said: "The feare of things invisible is the natural seede of 
religion." 1 David Hume said: "The first ideas of religion arose 
from a common concern with regard to the events of life and fears 
which actuate the mind." 2 Ribot finds the emotion of fear in 
varying degrees in all religions, "from profound terror to vague 
uneasiness, due to the faith in an unknown, mysterious, impalpable 
Power, able to render great services, and, more especially, to inflict 
great injuries." 3 

The source books furnish us abundant illustrations of the fear 
motive in religion and in other social customs. Mary H. Kingsley 
cites examples of the influence of fear among the people of Guinea. 
She describes it thus: 

I have often seen on market roads in many districts but always well away 
from Europeanized settlements, a little space cleared by the wayside, and 
neatly laid with plantain leaves, whereon were very tidily arranged various 

little articles for sale Against each class of articles so many cowrie 

shells or beans are placed, and always hanging from a branch above, or sedately 
sitting in the middle of the shop, a little fetish. The number of cowrie shells 
or beans indicates the price of the individual articles in the various heaps, 
and the little fetish is there to see that anyone who does not place in the stead 
of the articles removed their proper price, or who meddles with the till, shall 
swell up and burst. 4 

The element of fear led not only to a socializing attitude toward 
the extra-human environment, but the mechanical attitude also 
was developed in the struggle of life to dominate in the face of 
dangers and crises. This is exemplified in the use of magic, counter- 
magic, and sorcery as techniques which were thought to furnish 

1 Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 73. 

3 Quoted by Leuba, The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion, p. 81. 

3 Ribot, Psychologie des Sentiments, 4th ed., 1903, p. 309. 

4 Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies, pp. 248, 249. Other illustrations may 
be found in Frazer, The Golden Bough; Tylor, Primitive Culture; Spencer and Gillen, 
The Northern Tribes of Central Australia. 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 81 

the individual with a mechanism for controlling those environ- 
mental forces which were otherwise able to work him ill. The 
formula of the magician or sorcerer as a mechanism of this type is 
illustrated in the life of the Todas of South India, whose whole 
social fabric is bound up with the life of the buffaloes. An example 
of the sorcerer's formula is as follows: 

For the sake of Pithiotea, Om, Teikirji and Tirshti, by the power of the 
gods, if there be power; by the gods' country, if there be a country; may his 
calves perish ; as birds fly away, may his buffaloes go when the calves come to 
suck; as I drink water, may he have nothing but water to drink; as I am 
thirsty, may he always be thirsty; as I am hungry, may he also be hungry: 
as my children cry, so may his children cry; as my wife wears only a ragged 
cloth, so may his wife wear only a ragged cloth. 1 

When the sorcerer is uttering this incantation he holds in his 
hand five small stones tied together by a hair and all tied in a cloth. 
Then they are hidden in the thatch of the house of the man on whom 
he desires the misfortunes to fall. Thus satisfaction for the instinct 
for self-preservation is sought by a mechanical means which is 
supposed to operate in removing the danger which the individual 
fears is imminent. As we have observed in analogous circum- 
stances, the breakdown of the magical conception of causality was 
what led to the search for a scientific explanation and a scientific 
technique. 

The instinct of self-preservation reacts at other times in pug- 
nacity, and this is the activity which is basal to war. Sometimes 
fear enters and may serve either to stimulate the anger and fighting 
power or at other times to inhibit it. Professor Ames has rightly 
emphasized war as one of the occasions giving rise to the ceremonial. 
"In carrying out any interest savage tribes usually find innumer- 
able occasions for war. The war ceremonies are therefore much 
in evidence. They consist of councils, assemblages, decorations, 
fasts, parades, manoeuvres, dances, triumphal processions, feasts." 2 

Tylor points out how these savage races create divinities for 
special functions, including war. One of the numerous illustrations 
which he records is cited: "Areskove, the Iroquois War-god, seems 
to be himself the great celestial deity; for his pleasant food they 

1 W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, pp. 256-58. 2 Op. cit., p. 75. 



82 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

slaughtered human victims, that he might give them victory over 
their enemies; as a pleasant sight for him, they tortured the war- 
captives; on him the war-chief called in solemn council, and the 
warriors, shouting his name, rushed into the battle he was surveying 
from on high." 1 

But man did not depend exclusively on the spirit world to help 
him to win his battles. His need for self-preservation urged him 
to seek mechanical means also. At first he found his implements 
and tools and utensils and weapons in nature. Nature provided 
him with the grubbing-stick to enable him to handle the soil, with a 
round stone to serve as a hammer, with a cave or a thickly bef oliaged 
tree for a shelter, with a rough stick for a club, and with a sharp 
stone for a knife or a spearhead. The critical situations with which 
he was surrounded led to the birth of intelligence and selection. 
These tools and weapons were improved and his mechanistic tech- 
nique made increasingly efficient. In proportion to his advance- 
ment in this direction, he approached in the direction of a scientific 
conception of causality. 

IV. THE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS STIMULATED BY CONTACT WITH 
THE STRANGE AND THE UNUSUAL 

It will not be necessary for my purpose to go into an elaborate 
discussion concerning the problem as to whether curiosity is an 
instinct or not. Some psychologists deny that it is. Many claim 
that it is, among whom some classify it as a compound or secondary 
instinct. Biologists are agreed that there are in man and in many of 
the lower animals tendencies to distinctive reactions in the presence 
of the strange and the unusual. The behavior of dogs, of water 
snakes, and especially of monkeys is illustrative. The same dis- 
position is apparent in little children. I do not know of any word 
which my daughter has used more frequently during her fourth and 
fifth years than "Why?" For this type of behavior, whereby 
there is a disposition to pry into the strange and the unknown and 
which is indeed complex, we may apply the name "curiosity" in a 
generic sense. In another connection, where the discussion was 
concerned with the reference of science to a specific instinct, a 

1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, II, 306, 307. 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 83 

brief statement was made of the positions of Shand and Ribot. 1 
The analysis of Mr. Shand seems to me to be keen. His position, 
it may be observed, is close to that of Mr. McDougall, whose dis- 
cussion of curiosity 2 is good. The point which has interest in this 
connection is that both of these psychologists find curiosity as one 
of the roots appearing both in religion and science. Men of the 
greatest intellectual and spiritual vigor are men in whom the 
disposition to inquiry is most marked. To the impulse of curi- 
osity we surely "owe most of the disinterested labors of the 
highest types of intellect. It must be regarded as one of the prin- 
cipal roots of both science and religion." 3 Mr. Shand's theory, 
by which he traces elements of both religion and science to curi- 
osity, has already been stated. 

The result of this prying into the unusual and the unknown, like 
other instinctive behavior to which we have given our attention, has 
been the development of two distinctive attitudes. One is the 
attempt to establish a personal relationship with the power which 
the mind of man has posited as an animus in the unknown. This 
is a religious conception because it is a socializing concept and man 
tries to establish communion with this power. It is a prescientific 
concept because it is an effort to explain the inexplicable by refer- 
ence to a First Cause. Such an idea finds expression among many 
primitives, such as the Dakota Indians' wakan, the Polynesian 
mana, and the Algonquins' manitou. We have an expression of the 
same attitude in a more sophisticated environment in the concept 
of an Unknowable presented by Herbert Spencer. The desire to 
pry into the sphere beyond experience, the meta-empirical or meta- 
physical, is accompanied by the effort to establish social relation- 
ship therewith, or an element of mysticism. 

The other attitude is evidenced in the insatiable desire to add to 
the stock of human knowledge by the paths of investigation and 
experimentation. It is the basis of many of the most brilliant 
achievements of the human race. It has led to our scientific con- 
ception of causation and mechanical control through its accompany- 
ing technique. It has retired much that is magical and many 

J Pp. 67, 68, above. 

2 An Introduction to Social Psychology (10th ed.; Boston, 1916), pp. 57-59, 315-20. 

3 Shand, op. cit., p. 59. 



84 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

animistic conceptions through the splendid discoveries which it has 
made possible. 

In this connection it is of interest to note that the mystical 
temperament is more characteristic of people in tropical climates 
than of those in the temperate zones, whereas the scientific tempera- 
ment has had a richer development in the temperate climes. It 
leads to the conclusion that among the stimuli which affect the 
reactions of the organism the climatic forces play an active r61e. 
The warmer the climate, the greater the ennui, and ennui is no 
friend to science. At the same time, the warmer climates have 
given birth to more mystical types of religion, as witness Hinayana 
Buddhism, the bhakti development of Hinduism, the Sufi sect of 
the Mohammedans, and the ascetic ideal of Christianity developing 
on Egyptian soil. Theologies or scientific treatments of religious 
development have largely originated in the temperate climes where 
the climatic conditions seem to favor the development of a colder, 
more objective type of intellectual acumen. So also the larger 
developments of the other sciences have had their history in the 
temperate zone, and particularly in the north temperate zone. 

V. THE INSTINCTIVE REACTIONS CONNECTED WITH 
GREGARIOUSNESS 

Psychologists are not in perfect unanimity as to whether gre- 
gariousness is an instinct or not. Sometimes it is interpreted as 
intelligent behavior growing out of the needs created by the hunger 
and sex instincts. 1 Those who argue for the instinctive character 
of gregariousness refer to such phenomena in the lower animals as 
the swarming of bees, migrations of birds, colonies of ants, packs 
of wolves, herds of deer, flocks of sheep, droves of cattle, shoals of 
fishes, and the like. Among primitives the characteristic form of 
life is the group life of a clan or a tribe. In many cases the unity 
of the group is preserved by means of a totem animal with which the 
life of the group is identified. Among children the disposition to 
form cliques and gangs is further evidence of this tendency. The 
disposition for large numbers of people to herd in towns and cities 
is another link in the chain of evidence. 

1 Ames and Thomas find the origin of the social bond in the sexual life. See 
Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, p. 37; Thomas, Sex and Society, p. 56. 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 85 

From the biological point of view the evidence points to the 
belief that there are certain co-ordinations of reflexes which have 
been neurally integrated in such a way that the behavior is service- 
able in helping not only the individual but the group in the struggle 
for existence, i.e., serviceable for co-operation. Professor Brooks 
has shown convincingly that a study of the adaptations that are 
developed in the various species leads to the conclusion that such 
adaptations are "for the good of the species and not for the indi- 
vidual" as such. Moreover, he argues that "the law is universal, 
but since the welfare of the species is usually identified with that of 
the constituent individuals it is not obvious unless the good of the 
species demands the sacrifice of the individuals." The general 
law of nature which refers the properties of all living things to a 
social, utilitarian basis affords an explanation, he claims, for such 
varied gregarious activities as the migrations of salmon and the 
altruistic moral sense of man. 1 

The question at issue is as to which is the dominant principle in 
biological evolution, struggle or co-operation. Does the struggle 
for existence mean a ruthless struggle in which only the fittest 
individuals survive, and the less fortunate are destroyed by cruel 
competition ? There are some phenomena in nature, such as the 
struggle between different species of ants for mutual extermination, 
which afford evidence that certain biologists consider to be sufficient 
for the adoption of mutual struggle as a principle of biological 
evolution. 2 But the evidence seems to point more conclusively in 
the direction of the principle of mutual aid. There is more of co- 
operation than of cruel competition among the lower animals as 
well as in human society, and the biological justification for making 
sociability a law of nature is quite as sound as the argument for 
mutual struggle. The struggle for existence is not to be inter- 
preted as a struggle to exterminate the unfit, but as a collective 
struggle. Gregariousness is the rule in animal behavior, and not 
the exception. Association is to be seen in every stage of the evolu- 
tionary process. Decay and extermination are phenomena much 

1 W. G. Brooks, The Foundations of Zoology, pp. 11 7-19. 

2 Cf. the argument of the German biologist in "Headquarters Nights" by Vernon 
Kellogg in the Atlantic Monthly, August, 191 7. Also Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, A 
Factor in Evolution, chap. i. 



86 TEE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

more characteristic of unsociable than of gregarious animals. 
"Students of animals under domestication have shown us how the 
habits of a gregarious animal, taken away from his kind, are shaped 
in a thousand details by reference to the lost pack which is no 

longer there It is a strange thing, this eternal hunger of the 

gregarious animal for the herd of friends who are not there." 1 
There is good reason to believe that the non-social animal is a 
decadent type, the gregarious animal being antecedent and truer 
to type. 

The collective activities of the lower animals are almost as varied 
as in the case of primitive man. The animals co-operate with 
others of the same species for warding off inclement weather, 
guarding against danger, fighting, playing, dancing, singing, obtain- 
ing nutriment, migrating, procreating, and for the elimination of 
competition. So, too, primitive man lives an associated life. He 
is never characterized by individualism, but frequently by com- 
munism. The most primitive people observable, such as the Todas 
of South India, the Bushmen of South Africa, and the aborigines of 
Australia, show a well-developed tendency to sociality. 

The higher up we proceed in the scale of culture and sophistica- 
tion, the more evidence do we see of man's social nature and the 
more complex become the co-ordinations of men. Among mam- 
mals, the nearest akin biologically to man, association is present, 
but the organizations are developed very meagerly in comparison 
with man. Where the gregarious tendencies are most highly 
cultivated, there appears a better foundation for happiness and 
morality. Duty, morality, culture, happiness, love, sacrifice, 
service, truth, religion — these are all terms meaningless apart from 
social relations. 

We have, therefore, a biological justification for using the word 
"gregariousness" as a generic term for all the instinctive reactions 
which are serviceable to the group in the struggle for existence. 
Gregariousness has not always been regarded as an instinct, 
because in the case of " mammals at any rate the appearance of 
gregariousness has not been accompanied by any gross physical 

1 From Gilbert Murray's lecture on "Stoicism," quoted by H. G. Wells in God 
the Invisible King, pp. 88, 89. 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 87 

changes which are obviously associated with it." 1 On the other 
hand the cumulative results of gregariousness are so great as to 
really overbalance the most pronounced structural variations, so 
that, as Trotter points out, we find a state, frequently thought of as 
an acquired rather than as a congenital mode of behavior, " capable 
of enabling the insect nervous system to compete in the complexity 
of its powers with that of the higher vertebrates." 2 One might 
say that the whole structure is such that its functions and adapta- 
tions are quite as serviceable to the species as to the individual, and 
that includes the co-ordination and integration by the nervous 
system of reflexes; so that we are justified in urging that gregarious 
behavior is instinctive to the human organism as well as to the 
lower animals. 

The psychologist today is emphasizing as never heretofore the 
significance of gregariousness. Since man is a social animal, all 
psychology is, of necessity, the psychology of a social animal. 
There is no human psychology of an unadulterated individualism, 
since man as a solitary animal does not exist. On that account 
Professor Cooley is inclined to believe that all the instincts are 
social and holds that "social or moral progress consists less in the 
aggrandisement of particular faculties or instincts and the suppres- 
sion of others, than in the discipline of all with reference to the 
progressive organization of life." 3 He believes, however, that social 
behavior is of such a nature that it may be classified as instinctive. 
He says: 

I take it that the child has by heredity a generous capacity and need for 
social feeling, rather too vague and plastic to be given any specific name like 
love. It is not so much any particular emotion or sentiment as the undiffer- 
entiated material of many, perhaps sociability is as good a name for it as any. 
And this material, like all other instinct, allies itself with social experience to 
form, as time goes on, a diversifying body of personal thought in which the 
phases of social feeling developed correspond, in some measure, to the com- 
plexity of life itself. 4 

The reference of religion to gregariousness may be substantiated 
by an abundance of material. It has been noted already that in 

1 W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, p. 19. 2 Ibid., p. 20. 

3 Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order, p. 12. 4 Ibid., pp. 50, 51. 



88 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

primitivity human life is a group life, so that human interests and 
human needs are all tinged with a social element. Men went in 
groups to hunt and fish. Women went in groups to gather fruits. 
Men carried on war as groups. The group camped together, lived 
together, worked together, played together, fought together, and 
together they carried out their mimetic dances and other ceremo- 
nials. There would never have arisen a ceremonial or a cult had 
life been always and only individualistic. The struggle for exist- 
ence was a social struggle, calling for co-operation on all sides. 
The connection between the gregarious tendency and the social 
life is so close that, as we have seen, some psychologists and sociolo- 
gists find its origin there. Thus the need for food, the business 
of mating and procreating, the urge toward self -protection and 
preservation by means of war, and the search for a larger life by 
prying into the strange — all these interests have contributed to 
the understanding of human life as essentially, indeed as instinc- 
tively, gregarious. 

Among the evidences of the connection between religion and 
gregariousness we need only remind ourselves of a few, such as 
totemism and its concomitant ceremonial, animism and its extension 
of the social bonds beyond the mundane, group magic, ancestor 
worship, mimetic dances and ceremonials connected with war, 
mimetic ceremonials and sacrificial rites connected with the supply 
of food, and ceremonies connected with the normal occupation of 
the group, such as the Toda dairy rites. Among the more 
sophisticated races the connection is no less apparent, as witness 
the caste system and Hinduism, monasticism in various religions, 
religious festivals, churches and church services, revival meetings, 
sacred meals in the Greek and Christian religions, and social and 
missionary propagandism. 

But in another sense still, religion may be considered as an 
"irradiation," to borrow Starbuck's word, of the social instinct. 
The reference of religion to the limits of the human group is too 
narrow. The cult did not arise solely as a mimetic expression of 
group activities. It conveyed also the yearning of the group to 
enlist the aid of the extra-human power or powers in whose existence 
it believed. It was the mutual-aid principle carried into the life 



INSTINCTIVE ORIGIN OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE 89 

of a people which did not believe that it was bounded by the ordi- 
nary human group limits. It was the attempt of the group to 
make vocal its groping for the power or powers with which it would 
fraternize and co-operate. The prayer of the religious man is 
characteristic, like the call of the bird that has lost its mate or the 
lonely animal that has strayed from the herd, of a gregarious nature. 1 
Religion is the socializing of man, the social animal, with that which 
is beyond human society. 

On the other hand the evolution of a technique for mechanical 
adjustment and control has been within the social group. Human 
needs and human struggles are social because they are human. 
Thus the urge for the organization of a technique of a mechanistic 
type as well as of a technique of a socializing character is the urge 
which man, the social animal, has experienced as he, an individual 
within a group, struggled for existence. The advance of the sci- 
ences, progress of any kind of knowledge, depends upon the social 
structure. We may interpret co-operation as a big historical 
sweep by which the various members of the race in different groups 
and in different periods of history have entered into one another's 
labors for the great good of the social whole. The heritage of a 
scientific past is a conservation of energy, releasing the power of 
the present for new tasks, fresh achievements. - Progress is a child 
of gregariousness. 

The foregoing discussion is not intended to be an exhaustive 
treatment of instinctive behavior. I think, however, that the 
principal types have been treated. The investigation has led to 
two conclusions, the first of which concerns the complexity of 
instinctive behavior, and the second showing that the origins of 
religion and science are traceable to a multiple causality. 

1. In dealing with the five types of instinctive reactions with 

which we were concerned, it was impossible to deal with any one of 

them without finding one's self in contact with behavior which 

belonged to one or more of the other types. In the reactions 

resulting from the efforts to obtain food, ceremonials arose which 

x The parables of Jesus in Luke, chap. 15, are illustrative. Here religious need 
and religious longing are compared to the needs and longings of the sheep which had 
strayed from the flock, and the prodigal who had abandoned the privileges of home. 



90 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

involved gregarious activity. Crises in regard to the supply of 
food sometimes called forth flight; sometimes pugnacity. Neces- 
sity of providing for women and children developed a social dis- 
position. The sexual life with its mating and procreating activities 
involved gregariousness, the provision of food, curiosity as to the 
reproductive process, and flight or pugnacity in the interests of 
preservation. Self-preservation involved a demand for food, a 
satisfaction for the normal sexual desires, a search into the strange 
and unknown, and co-operation. Curiosity might arise as to 
whether a fruit were food or poison, or over the behavior of 
animals, and be akin to fear. It also called forth a group co- 
operation to procure satisfaction for its needs. Gregariousness 
involved a group need for food, the mating and parental relation- 
ships, a social demand for preservation, and a common desire to 
satisfy the human craving to increase the stock of knowledge by 
investigation and experimentation. Thus we come back to the 
conclusion that the organism is a unity and that the dominating 
urge is its struggle for existence. The end of each type of instinc- 
tive behavior appears to be a co-operation with the other types in 
the human struggle. 

2. Furthermore it is the struggle for existence to which the 
instinctive behavior is constantly contributing which has urged 
man to the formation of the two techniques of control which we call 
religion and science. By religion he seeks to establish social adjust- 
ments and relationships with the extra-human environment, and 
by science he endeavors to create mechanical adjustments and 
relationships to that environment. The purpose of both is the 
same — that he may "have dominion." 1 

1 Gen. i : 28. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 

The application of the historico-psychological method to the 
problems of the functions and genesis of religion and science is not 
without certain results of which the theologian must take cogni- 
zance. It is the purpose of this chapter to summarize the signifi- 
cance for theology in relation to the problems of authority, of the 
task of theology, of theological method, and of apologetics. 

It remains for us to observe of what significance it is for theology 
that we have established the genesis and functions of religion and 
science in the psycho-physical organism and its modes of behavior. 
For it must be evident that the significance is far-reaching. 

i. We have seen that it is possible to trace the origin of science 
and religion to certain typical methods of instinctive reaction to 
external stimuli. We are able also to trace with some degree of 
clarity the development of the attitudes from the instincts. Thus 
we have a genetic account of both religion and science as human 
attitudes. In that way the inductive approach has made it appar- 
rent that the differentiation is not between science, the human 
creation, and religion, the heavenly donation. Both are of human 
origin and both of them function to human needs. Hence both 
are developmental. We look for the beginnings of religion as well 
as of science in the behavior of primitive peoples where life is least 
complex, and not in an ecclesiastical Adam. We find that their 
function is to meet the insistent needs of man for control by the 
social and mechanical techniques which men have evolved in the 
religions and sciences. The whole conflict which raged so long 
between science and theology was due to the ecclesiastical self- 
assurance that theology possessed all the weight of divine authority 
behind it, whereas science was an impostor of human invention. 
If the conclusions of this thesis be correct, it means that the 
question of authority must be interpreted, not in the sense of 

91 



92 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

conformity to ecclesiastical standards, but with reference to 
efficiency and ability in satisfying the needs of a progressing 
humanity. 

2. The ecclesiasticizing of religion, which was the work of the 
Middle Ages, and the rationalizing of religion, which was attempted 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were both of them of a 
piece with deductive science. The presupposition was that truth 
was ready-made and unalterable. The laws of science and the 
dogmas of religion were alike everlasting. Man's task was one of 
discovery. What becomes of that conception as we historically 
and psychologically observe man in his struggle for existence and 
dominion actually participating in the making of truth? It 
means that the task of theology is not simply the discovery and 
classification of never-to-be-altered dogmas, but is creative and 
serviceable. It. too must accept the universal challenge to prove 
its worth by its ability to minister to man's religious needs. 

In the examination of the instincts it was observed that the 
findings of biology include the modifiability and adaptability of the 
instincts. But in the instinctive reactions we have the simplest, 
least complex type of human behavior. If even the instincts are 
modifiable and adaptable, surely the life-processes in toto must be 
likewise. It ought to be apparent that a static theology cannot 
hope to satisfy a kinetic world in which human nature itself is 
always in process of change. The future of theology is tied up 
with the recognition of its creative task as a ministrant to an 
evolving life. 

Theology is an interpreter of religion. Its purpose is instru- 
mental and functional rather than dictatorial and dogmatic. The 
only adequate criterion for testing and revising theology must be 
an appreciation of religion as we study it in actual social experience. 
The theology of the experience of an age of feudalism cannot do 
justice to the experiences of an age of democracy. It was out of the 
question that Anselm and Aquinas should write a theology for all 
time. Theology is always in the making even as religion itself is 
always in the making, or, still more fundamentally, as human life 
is conceived in terms of process. The theological task is never com- 



THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 93 

plete; so that a study of the religious life as evolving from the 
instinctive life constitutes a challenge for theology to face the situa- 
tion in a time when experimental science, democracy, war, indus- 
trial expansion, and rapid transportation have created a new world 
with social, ethical, and religious problems demanding the creative 
efforts of serious-minded men. 

3. The biocentric theory of the genesis and function of religion 
and science involves important consequences for the student of 
theological method. If the criterion be biocentric, then the demand 
is for co-operation between the two disciplines in the interests of the 
highest good for life. That means that theology becomes more ethical 
in proportion as it becomes scientific. Ritschl, as we have seen, 
tried to protect religion by saying that it is independent of science, 
and he argued that collisions occur only when a law of science, 
which obtains in the narrower field of nature, is erected into 
a world-law. His faculty psychology and dualism worked hand 
in hand. But the development of the organism as a unity suggests 
the impossibility of making such sharp lines of demarcation between 
the religious and scientific interests that the one can develop regard- 
less of the other. In that way theology may be protected against 
the danger of making statements which would be annulled by the 
known findings of science. The purpose of the theological doctrine 
is as truly functional as the scientific theorem. The needs of life 
demand of each of them a regard for the other. 

4. The apologetic possibilities of theology are immensely 
increased by the conclusions of this thesis. Some attention was 
given to the positivistic movement in its leading representative, 
Auguste Comte. It was Comte's contention that the history of 
man begins with a mythological stage, passes through a metaphysical 
stage, and is entering upon a positive stage. At the bottom we have 
cultureless religion, and at the top we shall have religionless culture. 
So also M. Guyau in his Non-Religion of the Future argued that 
civilization was moving toward a higher plane where it would be 
independent of religion. Thus these positivistic writers argued 
for the ultimate disintegration of religion. But if religion be a 
social attitude toward the extra-human environment having its 



94 THE RELATION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE 

roots in the instinctive life, as we have shown, we have an argument 
for its ineradicability and against any liability of corrosion. There 
will have to be a much greater modification in man's way of func- 
tioning than has yet taken place before religion is in danger of 
passing away. 

The evolutionistic monism of Haeckel and Ostwald was another 
effort to deny to religion any legitimate sphere. Their attempt 
was to work out a monistic system on the basis of science which 
should do everything for life that religion has done in the past. 
Their work was based on the fundamental misconception that 
religion deals only with the supernatural, and is therefore retired 
when scientific causality upsets miracle. But the work that was 
done by Hoffding is the best defense against such an attack. He 
showed that the whole question of miracle was due to a confusion 
of the religious and scientific tasks. When we conceive of religion 
as an evaluatory attitude as against the explanatory attitude of 
science, we see at once that the relegation of the question of miracle 
to the domain of the scientist is the most scientific procedure, since 
science deals with causes, while it emancipates religion for its real 
task of evaluating and interpreting the phenomena of experience 
in terms of our cosmic relationships. 

Naturalism has sometimes attacked religion on the ground that 
it is too metaphysical. All the truth of which we can be sure, 
says the naturalist, is that which we can prove in the laboratory. 
Thus the differentiation is made: religion deals with the meta- 
physical and hypothetical, whereas science deals with the physical 
and demonstrable. This is made the basis for a scientific agnosti- 
cism as to the questions of God, freedom, and immortality. Reli- 
gion has at least the argumentum ad hominem that science too has 
its metaphysics in the aeons, electrons, atoms, and molecules of 
the scientist. When scientists attempt to furnish a philosophy 
of life which shall take the place of and function for us as religion 
has done in the past, they become every whit as metaphysical and 
hypothetical as any religionist. The naturalistic theories are all 
of them capable of criticism at this point, as Professor Ward has 
shown in his epoch-making critique of Naturalism and Agnosticism. 



THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 95 

Moreover, the new emphasis in religion on function as against on- 
tology means that the force of this attack is largely spent on a 
phantom enemy. 

The persistence of religion, the truth of religion, the adequacy 
of doctrinal statements, and the uniqueness of Christianity — these 
are all of them questions with which we deal functionally today. 
Our defense is in terms of their serviceableness to life rather than 
their superior origin. The imperishable values are the achieved 
values rather than the donated. Against such an epistemology 
science has no case, and let us hope for her own sake that she desires 
none. 



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